Balloon artist Sung Chun-lin (宋俊霖) on Wednesday took the first prize in a twisting competition held by US balloon maker Qualatex for his piece Taiwan Blue Whale.
The 2m long blue-and-white piece was made using 170 balloons and took the artist 15 hours to complete.
Qualatex holds the balloon twisting contest annually, setting different rules for color combinations each year. This year the contest, themed “Navy Color Quest,” asked participants to design their submissions around navy-blue balloons.
Photo courtesy of Sung Chun-lin
Sung said he was inspired to make a whale model as the whale is the symbol of the Formosa Alliance (喜樂島聯盟) — a political organization that calls for a referendum on Taiwanese independence and the nation’s participation in the UN.
The whale is one of Sung’s favorite animals, and symbolizes freedom and dreams, he said, adding that he never imagined that the animal would help him realize his own dream of winning an international competition.
Sung started from the tail, folding the balloons while looking at a picture of a whale, he said, adding that judging the angle of the tail was the hardest part.
The challenge in making the head was in shrinking several balloons and having them converge on one point, which involved a lot of trial and error, he said.
Sung used different twisting and cladding techniques to make his submission, and while they were not the most difficult balloon modeling techniques to execute, they require precision, he said.
Sung, 25, graduated from National Taipei University of Education’s Department of Digital Technology Design. While acting as a director for a group of illusionists, he asked well-known balloon artist Chiang Mu-cheng (姜牧呈) to teach him balloon modeling.
He learned basic models from Chiang and the rest through self-study using books and YouTube before spending a year in Japan’s Gunma Prefecture to take more advanced classes. He then spent a year in Australia busking before returning to Taiwan.
While he earned good money in Australia, he wanted to build a career as an artist in Taiwan, where he has roots, he said.
Aside from his win in the US, Sung said he has also submitted a balloon animal to a domestic contest: a Papilio maraho — a long-winged butterfly indigenous to Taiwan.
All of his original designs are inspired by Taiwanese animals, including the Formosan black bear, he said.
Sung next plans to make balloon versions of the Formosan Sika deer and the Formosan landlocked salmon, he added.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS