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Move over Snoopy and Ronald McDonald! Internationally renowned artist Yayoi Kusama is a designing a balloon that will float from Central Park West to Herald Square as part of this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Celebrated for her trippy Infinity Mirror Rooms and polka-dotted pumpkins, Kusama will be blowing away crowds with a cheery, sun-shaped inflatable titled Love Flies Up to the Sky. Colored bright red, it’s festooned with, yes, polka dots (in white, yellow and purple) and ringed with tentacle-like protrusions meant to represent light rays. The balloon will be big, too, measuring 34 feet tall by 30 feet long by 36 feet wide (or as Macy’s prefers to put it: Three building stories by five bicycles by seven taxicabs), and will take 40 handlers to wrangle it along the parade route.
Love Flies Up to the Sky is based on a motif borrowed from the artist’s own “My Eternal Soul” series of paintings begun in 2009, and its inclusion in this year’s turkey day festivities coincides with a exhibition of new works at Chelsea’s David Zwirner Gallery.
Kusama’s flight of fancy is the latest entry in Macy’s Blue Sky program, which has featured balloons by famous artists since 2005. Kusuma joins a roster of names that has included Jeff Koons, Keith Haring and Takashi Murakami.
The parade kicks off at 9am on November 28, so if you’re a Kusama fan (and who isn’t?), you won’t want to miss it.