A Gila monster, that is…

The Story of Gwendolyn

In the year 2019...in an underground laboratory deep beneath Cincinnati...a mad scientist is hunched over his prized pet, Gwendolyn the Gila Monster. Dr. Kosmo fiddles with dials and buttons, monitoring Gwendolyn’s movements. His current experiment involves teaching the lizard to dance to songs played from a bugle. She bobs and weaves with his motions as numbers tick across the screen. He treats her with lacewing flies; her favorite meal!

Suddenly, a freak solar flare bathes the lab in radiation. His instruments whiz chaotically just before the lab goes dark. There is a haze of smoke in the air and Gwendolyn lays motionless. The lacewing flies have a slight glow about them in their jar. Concerned for his beloved lizard, Dr. Kosmo wakes her with a spray bottle and feeds her flies to help revive her. Soon she is roaming about the lab again, glowing faintly and gobbling up anything she can eat. Gwendolyn begins to grow larger.

Soon she is the size of a desk, out of food, and out of control. She breaks through the reinforced lab door and up the stairs. Hungry and confused, Gwendolyn bursts onto Vine Street. A crowd of people have gathered there, clamoring and taking photos. The camera flashes and yelling are too much for Gwendolyn, now 30 feet long and strobing multi-colored lights. She begins to rampage as the crowd of onlookers swells.

Dr, Kosmo emerges from the stairwell with a bugle in hand. Placing it to his lips he trumpets aloud the siren song of the Gila, a discordant tune he composed to compel the lizard to dance. And it works. Soon Gwendolyn is swerving her way through downtown. The only hope for these people to survive is to get Gwendolyn to the river and into Kentucky.

(Or so the story goes)

Actually Gwendolyn is a parade float made by Golden Brown for the Blink Parade in Cincinnati, OH.

How We Made a Monster

Golden Brown made our Blink debut in 2017 with Underpants Dance. 4 friends in inflatable, illuminated fatsuits waddled through the streets of Cincinnati. Hand painted with wrinkles and body hair, these glowing suits were a whole lot of fun. When the opportunity arose to make another parade submission in 2019, we went for it. We wanted to take the idea of battery powered LED art further, envisioning a huge multi-person float in addition to individual performers. With help from our friends at Artworks, we had the funds we needed to produce this monster and a timeline that seemed possible.

We sketched something like a Chinese dragon with the puppeteers on the outside so the interior worked like a tunnel. This way, people dressed as glowing insects could be eaten and pass through the body out the rear end. Gwendolyn would be able to eat her way through the parade with a huge articulated mouth that could open large enough for humans to fit inside comfortably. We made a scale model of the float; it ended up looking a lot like a Conestoga Wagon with a head and tail.

Our float would be made from aluminum for its light weight properties and ease of cutting/welding. After making some scale drawings and measurements, we bent large hoops for the rib cage and custom contours for the head. Mostly the construction would be with hardware so we could take it apart for transportation. The whole thing would roll around on 8 large casters to handle potholes and dips in the city streets. We would need 6 people to pilot her: 1 at the head, 4 for the legs, and 1 at the tail.

After mounting Pex tubing to the outside, we invented small, custom-made clips out of PVC to quickly mount the skin to the frame. We used Tricot, a strong and inexpensive fabric and spray-painted Gwendolyn’s details directly onto the stretched skin. We painted the entire lizard body as one piece and four separate legs. The blackout effect of the spray paint on the off-white skin allowed us to illuminate her any color using wireless LED technology

Photos credits: Dave Jarred and Kenton Brett

On a similar but smaller scale, we made 6 wing packs for our glowing lacewing flies. These would be worn by performers and have articulating wings to allow them to be eaten without snagging on the inside of the body. Each with its own battery pack and sequencer, the wearer can control the flash and color via remote control. LED technology has become inexpensive enough that this was feasible and fairly straightforward.

The Big Parade

After a mad dash to get everything packed up, we towed the great beast downtown on the day of the parade. With one person driving, the other jogging behind to keep her steady, we slowly made our way from Walnut Hills all the way to the parade sight. We got pulled over once by the police and had a friend tail us for safety (thanks Jen!) Many people in passing cars took videos of us, as our ridiculous, lumbering, lovely monster safely trudged her way downtown.

And the crowds did not disappoint! The parade was huge, hundreds of thousands of humans, all cheering while waving glow-sticks, flashlights, and cell phones. Vine street was littered with confetti and the sounds of marching bands. Adrenaline was high, and many bottles of water had been drunk before we left the gates. We got the minimal damage caused from the move repaired and her head mounted, tail swinging. So many friends came out to support us and we still cannot thank you enough, it was amazing to see so much enthusiasm! Everyone pitched in to get the wing packs rigged up and the huge float fully functioning.

photo credits: Emily Caito

It came together beautifully, the tech worked, the lacewings flew, and Gwendolyn glowed. Her colors were a spectral arrangement by our friend Alex who controlled her looks from a tablet as he walked alongside us. Dr. Kosma led the way, his bugle blaring and belching out an off-key symphony as Gwendolyn swerved her way through the crowds. She opened her mouth often to gobble up the flies that circled around her. Onlookers could watch the glowing wings of human flies pass through her massive body and come out her rear end. The crowd ate it up (so to speak), cheering as the lacewings were sucked into her gaping maw. Delicious!

photo credit: Emily Juengel

Parade Footage, compiled by Dave Jarred and shot by Doug K

I describe the event like planning a wedding. There is massive amounts of planning, prepping, phone calls, and even the occasional exchange of words when tempers run high. All leading up to one night, one big event that you worked so hard for. And then it’s over. Only existing as memories and whatever documentation we got from photographers.

A Fond Farewell

Fortunately, Gwendolyn got to live on at CampSITE in Camp Washington, an outdoor sculpture park only a couple miles from the parade. They let us exhibit her there for a few months and we were able to deliver her directly from the rental truck after the parade. It was really cool to see her size in comparison to a school bus!