The festival opened with a Huge Miniature Parade (it sounds like a contradiction in terms, but actually isn't) - a procession of dozens of miniature floats through the Dumbo district of Brooklyn, accompanied by a marching brass band.
For my miniature float I decided to pay homage to a late artist who has given me endless inspiration since my teenage years - the Austrian Friedensreich Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. Creator of vivid, vibrant paintings, passionate activist speech-maker (often preferring to make speeches in the nude)on ecological and political matters, and eventually architect and creator of fantasy dwelling spaces which never contained a single straight line or right angle, and which always provided a home for trees and nature as well as human beings.
As Hundertwasser advocated the principles of permaculture and the cyclical patterns of nature in his architectural vision, the basic construction material for my float was recycled cardboard from the streets of Dumbo - the location, interestingly, where cardboard was first manufactured and from which it was shipped across the world.
In its raw cardboard form (nb.unsustainable material used in the process = glue sticks) Ornate pillars made from sections of plastic drinks bottles.
After a few layers of papier mache to clean up cardboard's unsightly cut edges (I have a slight aversion to these and feel that to papier mache cardboard is to truly elevate it to the sculpturing material of the gods)
The finished Hundertwasser Haus, complete with rooftop 'tree holders', into which sprigs of foliage can be inserted to create the tree-filled human dwelling place that Hundertwasser spent his life dreaming of.
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