When I make a sculpture for the book I usually plan to make it only once. Between the travel, time, and resources, it can be draining to do it again. That said, I have made “the” ark for The Inflated Story of Noah five times. The first was in Thomasville, Georgia in the halls of the church I grew up in. The second was in Pensacola, FL. The third was in Galveston, TX. The fourth was on lake Wright Patman in Texarkana, TX. The most recent attempt was in Israel. Each attempt was special, and several of these show up in the book.
When I made the Ark at the beach in Galveston, years had passed since I first tried to create the book in the hall of my home church. I was the youth minister at FBC Atlanta, TX, and I had finally decided to give the book real attention. I made plans with the parents of a few of our guys to take them on an adventure and we set out for Galveston.
When we rolled into Galveston, the weather was icky. Nevertheless, we checked into our hotel room and I set to work on Noah’s Ark 2.0. On this attempt, I tried using larger balloons to make the ark, thinking it might look better. It didn’t. It made the ark even more flimsy, and the weather made the waters choppy and the arch enemy of balloons: wind. I thought I was clever, because I bought a cheap remote-control boat to help tow the ark. Epic Fail. The remote controlled boat was never the same, and in the course of sloshing through the drizzle and photographing the ark in the ocean I managed to lose my cell phone and slice my hand on a rock. On the bright side, between barrel rolls I managed to get a few decent shots of the ark that look like it is being ravaged by a storm (which it is!) Plus, the trip was a great way to get to know some of the students in the youth group better.