Thomas Birks and Joachim Jensen, the team that brought Grand Rapids "Nessie on the Grand" last year, have something big brewing for ArtPrize 2010. The team is shifting their gaze from the seas to the skies and invite the public to witness the progress of their project: "Parsifal, The SteamPig.""Parsifal" is a project that channels the ingenuity of the industrial Revolution along with our cultural kinship with pigs. This multi-media sculpture is taking shape now in a warehouse at 700 Ionia Street between Franklin and Logan. The piece will make its ArtPrize debut at the B.O.B.
“Parsifal” (“Percy” to his friends) turns the idiom “when pigs fly” on its head. Once complete, this 55-foot- long-by-25-foot high porcine-shaped airship will weigh between 8,000 to 9,000 pounds. Indeed, “Parsifal” surpasses his earth-bound domestic cousins’ average weight (a skimpy 100 to 300 pounds), but he has tools they lack: two main sails with a rear aft-driver atop three 10-foot tall masts and four 5-foot-wide-by-10- foot-long steam-powered turbine engines.
For more information, visit www.steampig.com.
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