Falls Church Farmers’ Market balloon artists Marsha Gallagher and TJ Michael joined 73 other balloon artists from around the world this week to build Balloon Manor 2014 in Rochester’s historic Sibley Building atrium. The piece, titled “The VERY Tall Tale of Jack and his Beanstalk,” will be on view through this weekend, where visitors will be able to “climb” the beanstalk from the ground-floor garden to the fifth-floor castle via an escalator.
This is the fifth Balloon Manor from Airigami, an art studio specializing in “the fine art of folding air.” An estimated 50,000 balloons were used to create the five-story sculpture.
The husband-and-wife duo has worked on other large-scale projects. Gallagher has twice before been on the Balloon Manor crew, and Michael worked on a team that built a life-sized Acrocanthosaurus at the Virginia Museum of Natural History last year.
