Imagine a puffy white cloud floating above Downtown, dotted with hearts, flowers and symbols of ancient icons and rituals.
If you’re at Hemming Park in about nine weeks, you won’t have to imagine it — you’ll see it.
Sharla Valeski, who has a reputation for avant-garde, unorthodox art whether it’s painting, sculpture or multimedia, is creating a 10,000-cubic-foot inflated sculpture made of rip-stop nylon.
She’s sewing it together in the former maritime museum space at the Jacksonville Landing.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about since I graduated from Jacksonville University in 1994,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to make something up in the sky.”
Her original inspiration was Andy Warhol’s “Silver Clouds,” small floating pillows filled with helium that debuted in 1966 at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City.
“But I wanted to do something huge and helium is very expensive,” Valeski said.
The inspiration that led to the work’s fruition came one day about eight years ago. Valeski was in her car and saw one of those tall, waving figures by the side of the road that businesses set up to get attention.
They are inflated by an electric blower and when she saw it, Valeski knew she had the answer for her sculpture.
“I bought a $350 blower and stared at it for eight years, thinking about what kind of figure I could make,” she said.
When complete, the bottom of the sculpture will include hearts, flowers and “humanoid figures holding cats and dogs in shopping bags.”
There also will be ancient symbols, such as scarabs and hearts dripping blood, symbolic of Mayan sacrifices, Valeski said.
The project really started taking shape — literally — about six months ago in Valeski’s 400-square-foot studio at the CoRK Arts District in Riverside.
Then reality collided with inspiration and she soon thought her dream might have hit a stopping point due to the scale of the project.
That’s when the Landing offered her the large former retail store and museum near Compass Bank, where she can spread out the sculpture as it takes shape.
“The Landing is a great sponsor. I wouldn’t have been able to do this project without this space,” said Valeski.
When the envelope portion of the sculpture is finished, she plans to test the air worthiness of the piece after hours on the loading dock and “probably really surprise some people who are going over the Main Street Bridge,” she said.
When it’s complete, Valeski will have spent nearly 1,000 hours cutting and then sewing together hundreds of yards of rip-stop nylon.
The so far unnamed art (right now, “I’m calling it the monster,” she said) is scheduled to make its debut floating above the trees in Hemming Park in late June or possibly at the July 6 Art Walk.
“I want people to be amazed and inspired,” Valeski said. “I want them to know you can do anything if you put your mind to it.”
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