This Thanksgiving will mark the first time ever that a balloon designed by a woman appears in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has lent her talents to this year’s festivities, designing a balloon she calls ‘Love Flies Up to the Sky.’
The creation, which looks like a giant, colorful sun with a face, will measure 34 feet tall, and 30 feet wide, and 30 feet long, and will require 40 handlers to guide it from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Herald Square.
New this year: Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has lent her talents to this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, designing a balloon she calls ‘Love Flies Up to the Sky’
Huge: The giant, colorful sun with a face will measure 34 feet tall, and 30 feet wide, and 30 feet long, and will require 40 handlers to guide it
The 90-year-old artist is most well known for her art featuring her trademark polka dots, as well as her dark, glittering light infinity rooms that pop up in major cities and subsequently flood Instagram feeds.
Celebrities have flocked to her exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York, waiting in line for hours for just a minute inside an infinity room.
But her latest project, the parade balloon, will reach a much wider audience, with an estimated three million people set to watch along the parade’s 2.7-mile route and an additional 20 million watching on television.
Kusama designed the balloon and sent her specifications to a team of balloon specialists at Macy’s, who have built the piece ahead of the parade on November 28.
‘We take a sketch, put it into a design program, and actually create a 3D-printed model of it so that we’re able to say this is where these pieces should go, this is how we’re going to build it,’ Susan Tercero, the parade’s executive producer, told Architectural Digest.
The artist: At 90 years old Kusama, is the first female artist to design a balloon for the parade
‘The artist works in collaboration with us because they create that design, we’ll make alterations based on what we know needs to happen from a technical standpoint, and we’ll go back and forth until there’s a final approval.’
Preview photos show a giant red sun with swirling tentacles covered in 300 hand-painted dots, finished off with a face of blue eyes, pink cheeks, and red lips.
The character is from her My Eternal Soul series.
According to Bloomberg, this is the first time in the parade’s nearly hundred-year history that a woman has designed one of the balloons.
The parade actually started in Newark, New Jersey in 1924, though balloons didn’t first appear until 1931.
Kusama is the latest artist to be enlisted by the Blue Sky Gallery program, which has had major artists like Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons make balloons for the parade.
Popular: She is most well known for her art featuring her trademark polka dots, as well as her dark, glittering light infinity rooms that pop up in major cities
So pretty! The infinity rooms are favorites of Instagrammers, who wait for hours to get inside
See it: Kusama’s work is also currently on display at the David Zwirner gallery in New York City
‘Her work lends itself to that playful whimsy that we like to see in the sky,’ Tercero told ARTnews.
‘What’s fantastic about her art, and why I think she’s so world-renowned, is that it is so accessible. Everyone can look at her art and appreciate it, understand it, and feel something from it, and that’s what we’re trying to do.’
Tercero added that it will be ‘really fascinating to see how kids and adults alike respond to it.’
‘That’s what makes working with this particular artist such a fantastic moment for the parade. Her designs and her creations fall right in line with what the parade is all about — entertainment for young and old.’
Meanwhile, Kusama’s work is also currently on display at the David Zwirner gallery in New York City and ICA Boston.