Where Have I Been You Ask? Fashion Week I Say.

A few weeks back i had the distinct pleasure of working with some dear friends from way back in the Pratt days on a project for Pepsi and Simon Doonan in conjunction with Mercedes Benz Fashion Week here in New York. Pepsi was unveiling their brand-new "Skinny Can" Diet Pepsi can and commissioned Doonan to concept some giant display style props for both a gallery in Soho that would host a release party of sorts, as well as some booth displays at Lincoln Center where most of the Fashion Week action would be occurring.
We ended up having to build 1 gigantic Pepsi can out of Pepsi cans (complete with proportional straw), 4 gigantic stiletto heels built from Pepsi cans, some weird eyeball light fixtures that incorporated the company's logo, and create several "stages" from full soda cans upon which would sit the above, as well as some custom furniture and wallpaper from Jonathan Adler, and at the party, live models. While it was certainly hard work over long days that required a lot of precision, the very nature of the project and materials involved kept the mood light with a certain air of "I can't believe we're actually getting paid to build this stuff!" Good times.
My tasks pretty much entailed assembling a lot of empty cans into the shoes once we had settled on the design, meticulously hand painting a bunch of gigantic Pepsi logos, and figuring out the construction and assembly of the straw and wallpaper vignette. 
While I'm certainly happy to be back in the confines of the studio, and working on some rad new projects to boot, this was an awesome break from the usual illustration/design routine of draw, scan, rinse, repeat with a bunch of old friends that i don't see enough of, a fleeting moment of living out some "young Rauschenberg" fantasy (he got his start as a window designer ya know). Photos below!

Some shots of the "can based" props nearing completion in the Soho space.

Engineering and wrapping the straw with the Jonathan Adler Pepsi pattern at my studio.

The Adler pattern was printed on gigantic sheets of rag paper and installed "wallpaper" style with discreet tacks. Notice the "can floor" as well...i think it ended up being somewhere near 6 tons of Pepsi...

The finished installation, complete with models, at the launch party.