When a Seven-Year-Old Becomes Your Art Director: The Brief and Glorious Life of a Jellyfish Piñata

Commissions, by their very nature,  come with  discerning clients---but  few were as exacting as one highly discriminating, very particular seven-year-old with a vision. The assignment: create a jellyfish piñata worthy of a birthday celebration.

Constructed from paper mâché, Mod Podge, and shimmering mylar, it had to be strong enough to suspend eight pounds of candy overhead without raining gummy bears (prematurely) onto unsuspecting guests. At the same time, it couldn't be too strong. There is a fine line between “durable party decoration” and “indestructible party decoration” especially when its destiny rests in the hands of a bat-wielding band of short attention-spanned second graders.

After hours of layering, drying, reinforcing, adjusting, experimenting, and negotiating with gravity, the jellyfish finally floated into existence—iridescent, magical, and ready for sacrifice.

Like many creative endeavors, it was an absurd amount of work for a very brief payoff. Hours of labor for minutes of joy. But then again, watching a room full of children gleefully reduce your work to confetti while candy rains from the sky may be one of the purest forms of artistic success.