- Where's the floating, inflatable Jimmy Dimora? Oh, right, the actual Jimmy Dimora works for that.
In honor of this year's Three Rivers Arts Festival, artist Stephon Antonson created a 20-foot tall floating head of the estimable Andrew Carnegie that will drift about in the Allegheny River until the festival ends. A Cleveland company constructed the inflatable vessel, which is nice, except no one seems to know which Cleveland company that was.
Either way, kudos for creating the actual object and not surreptitiously substituting a massive inflatable Brownie the Elf in its place. That takes class.
Here are some details from the Wall Street Journal:
Last week, as part of the 10-day Three Rivers Arts Festival held annually in downtown Pittsburgh, artist Stephen Antonson unveiled a unique gift to the city: a giant 20-foot inflatable sculpture of Andrew Carnegie’s head, to remain floating in the Allegheny River for the duration of the festival. The industrialist is pictured with snorkeling gear, and is kept afloat by a generator that blows cold air.Antonson got the go ahead for the floating sculpture last Thanksgiving, after he fortuitously met Three Rivers Arts Festival Advisory Board vice-chair Alice Snyder at a dinner party. He then spent the next few months brainstorming ways to create a cost-effective, but still lifelike bust of Carnegie to present to the festival.
The copious amounts of pictures of Andrew Carnegie wearing a snorkel helped Antonson create the lifelife bust, I do believe.
