TJam 01. Wednesday, Day -2

The Day Of Travel

After arriving at Austin and calling the hotel shuttle, I went outside to wait. There was a guy wearing a "Eurojam" T-Shirt with a logo of a balloon dog on the front. "Hmmmm, this guy is probably here for T-Jam." Turns out he was Rick Mohr, who does balloons for a living and will be heading to the Netherlands to teach classes in the near future. We chatted on the shuttle over to the hotel. Pulling into the parking lot he waved to a guy going to his car. Turns out it was John Holmes (not that John Holmes, you perverts), the balloon guy well known for his spectacular Christ on the Cross sculpture, which has to be seen to be believed. (here's a picture if you're interested)

Got my hotel room, unpacked some stuff, and went downstairs to see some folks "jamming" in the lobby of the hotel. (For those unfamiliar with the balloon twisting world, a jam is just a group of folks playing with balloons together, usually with techniques and ideas shared) There I met John Holmes and his son Benji, as well as Fred Harshberger (the two bears with one balloon guy), Patrick Brown , the award winner from the last TJam in 99, Sheree from Long Island, and Lynn (who came from Australia!) and her little sprog Kurt.

After an hour or two of playing around, a small caravan took a road trip to a local supermarket for longer-term supplies. The hotel room had a small refrigerator for storing perishables, which made healthy eating almost possible on this trip.

Enough of my rambling, it's time for

The Pictures

	Kurt with a big round clear balloon with a bouncy-ball inside.
	Generally Jamming. From Left to right is Sheree, John Holmes, Benji Holmes, Fred Harshberger, and Lynn, with "Captain" Kurt in the middle.
	A Harley Davidson by John Holmes
	Sheree constructing a giant clown.
	A 6-shooter by John Holmes
	One of our lovely hotel staff, taking home a happy face and a balloon bazooka for her son.
	A little balloon bear trapped in another clear balloon. After the TJam I made one of these for the DC office of ArsDigita. One of the visitors to the office asked "what's that fetus thing on the front desk". Oh well.
	Little balloon pooch by Patrick.
	Giant clown being assembled
	The giant clown complete, along with Sheree Brown-Rosner, its creator.
	Larry Hirsch.
	Mark Verge and a cool sword.
	The daughter is the twister in the family (she's got a restaurant gig that pays > $30/hour!).
	Raul Gonzolas (from Mexico) and his balloon apron.
	Hans and his TwistEmUp apron.
	Mark and a fish-like-being made out of latex gloves made by HyGloss.
	And Hans making one of those fish-like-beings.
	Detail of a bee based on a little design Hans was wearing, made from a round happy-face balloon and a 160 or a 260.
	Yet another Hans creation. It's like a smaller version of the WAY-Cool gang's hat. The pattern for this can be found on Hans' CD
	Kurt wearing the WAY-Cool cockroach hat.
	I'm not sure what this guy is supposed to be
	But here he/she/it is.
	And here's T Myers, the "T" of "TJam"
	Hmmm... looks like a small clown exploded here.
	This amused me - taking pictures of the meep meep bird I did (which actually is pretty basic compared to much of the stuff I was seeing)

Other random notes

• The harley has a braided black for the rear wheel. John showed me how he did the frame (but I got lost pretty quickly). He did mention always keeping the long balloons long - that is, if you can use a short balloon for a segment of a frame, use it, since you'll need the length of the longer balloons for the longer part of the frame.

• Pat showed a reverse raisin twist, a.k.a. an "Art" twist (named after Art Tivoli). Instead of putting a chunk of balloon scrap into the round or heart balloon for the raisin, you use the nozzle of the balloon you're attching as the raisin - stick it through the balloon (e.g. forming a double-layer of latex), use some slack in the balloon to wrap around it, and use an ear twist to keep it stable. This twist is explained in some detail on Art's Balloneries CD

• When putting a 160 or 260 sculpture into a 350 (like the bear in the bubble picture above), inflate a clear 350 from the end and tie it off. Shove the item to be wrapped into the bubble from the end, and then into the bubble some more so that there is a small tube coming off the end. Inflate from this tube, tie off, pop the outer bubble. This is also described somewhere on Balloon HQ.

• As an alternate to the usual way of doing double-pinch twists, just make two small bubbles, lock them together, then twist them opposite directions.

• rather than using rubber cement for some things, Pat has this cool tapeless tape dispensor, "Easy Stick Roller" that was pretty handy.

• Pat demonstrated the illusion eyes. Make a button eye, Press it (don't attach) against a clear, then wrap that with deflated 350 to hold it together. John came up with a variation of wrapping a clear 260 around the top of a button eye for a similar (and faster) effect.

• For a 90-degree bend, pinch the balloon and turn the balloon to the angle you want. release.

• Larry did a very nice candy-cane effect. He spiraled two 260's against each other, and then added 160s in the grooves to smooth it out.

• Sheree showed me "Blow hard with a vengeance", a "strong-man" type of game. Make a spral bow/harp shape. Put a clear 260 in where the bowstring would be, and put a ball in the 260. Write level markers (10 30 50 30 10) along the 260. Put a gold round at the top (like a bell). The game is to bounce up the ball by pulling on the knot of the nozzle up to the 50 point level without going over.

• I talked Fred into showing the Kissing Bears in more detail. They're really easy to do out of a single 160, but out of a single 260 is really hard. I had been inflating them too much. He also showed his technique for doing the feet (where you can use up the excess balloon) by squeezing the remainder of air to the end, twisting off a small tail, then doing the feet

• John informed everyone that the leading cause of death among giraffes is lightning.

• Fred showed his Mahove rattle Snake bit, which made a nice snake head. His routine involved getting a balloon seed into the balloon. He showed a technique where you use your thumb to insert the seed (rather than a finger), which makes breaking off the seed easier. When you tie off the balloon after putting in the seed, if forms a nice snake head shape

• The bulge you get from rolling out the knot makes a nice shape for a pistol handle, as well as making single-balloon bear snouts stay in the head better

• When making the bear head, leave a finger behind the head as you put the snout through - makes a nicer line in back

• Granger blue balloons are a very nice shade of blue. Raul said that the Prestige blue is nice too

• There were some Qualatex neons there. They look great in the bag, but inflated they just look like pastels. Bummer.

• The fishy-gloves are "hygloss", available at craft stores.

• Sheree had a bunch of condoms she got from ebay, and was experimenting using them to stuff sculptures into (like into the clear 360s). Apparently they're cheaper than 360s (in bulk via ebay) and stay transparent longer. They're also thinner and break more easily. Needless to say, "Anyone else want to try a condom" was the catchphrase of the evening.

• Apparently Dale has a page off of the yahoo group that has technique for drawing eyes

• Hans' web site is twistedmind.nl

nite nite