This week Burlington artist Abby Manock will return home from her debut installation at Coachella Music and Arts Festival, which just ended its two-weekend run yesterday in Indio, Calif. Her joyous contribution? The Noodle Family Traveling Circus.
Manock describes the vermicular, constantly moving inflatables as a “reappropriation of the popular air-powered, inflatable roadside attention grabbers designed to attract more customers” to a business. Though, in this case, Manock’s 18-foot “noodles” emerging from a platform stage were more likely to inspire dancing. Probably, um, noodle dancing.
Manock’s put-a-smile-on-your-face artwork often features anthropomorphized nonhuman shapes — blogs, wiggles, critters and edibles. Burlingtonians may remember her tall, “human-powered” murals titled “Monkeys vs. Bananas” that scrolled down the side of the BCA Center a few years back, and invited the public to paint them. Her works are playful, brightly colored and appealing to the inner child of all ages.
Manock is no stranger to large-scale projects elsewhere, either. From her first concert installation at Phish‘s 2003 It Festival in Limestone, Maine, she has exhibited her work literally around the globe, from Boston to LA, El Salvador to Japan.
What will she come up with next? Visit Manock at her Pine Street Studio and find out.
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