Improvisation Inflatables – Rebecca Enright

For the first inflatable, I started out not sure what shape I was going for, but really enjoyed the idea of yellow, pink and white together, outlined in a bold black tape. After constructing the body/head part of the fish, I realized what it kind of looked like and attempted to flesh it out fully. With the birdlike one, I folded the body of it inside out after taping it so the “seam” was on the inside. It formed in a manner similar to that of the fish, in that I thought about making it more concrete as I worked on it. I had known that in at least one of the inflatables I wanted to try putting straws inside of it, and I wasn’t originally going to do it in any of them except for a clear one, but I liked the idea of putting them in the bird one as well because it made me think of the term “bird-brain” and thought it fit the look of it. I also put them inside the black one and wanted to see if there was a way to have them blow into the clear part, but it didn’t work out that way because they fell through the hole on their own. That idea worked out much better for the clear one though, because the pieces are blown all around it instead of in a little area and it’s more angular, so the pieces have walls to bounce off of. I also focused less on making that one a distinguishable shape and wanted the emphasis to be on the straw pieces inside of it. For the two cubes, I wanted to try taping two distinct shapes together and have one blow up the other (a precursor to the black one), but I had a lot of trouble with that one, as well as with the others, in getting the tape to stick without forming holes over time. It seemed like they kept popping up even after I layered it with tape. That aspect was really challenging, but the process overall was really enjoyable.