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With his yellow
hard hat, suspenders printed to look like rulers and big
bouquet of multicolored helium balloons, Mark Icanberry
caught the group of elementary school kids' attention immediately.
They sat in cluster at his feet, jaws agape.
"Before we began,"
he said, his eyes big, "I'd like to teach some new words,
neutral buoyancy. Can you say that?"
"Neutral buoyancy!"
squealed the kids, sending their voices reverberating off
the walls of the gymnasium at the Mid-Peninsula Boys and
Girls Club in San Mateo.
The 20 kids
practice saying the very grown-up term over and over. After
all, it helps to understand neutral buoyancy-reached when
an object floats in midair-when you're building a 50-foot
blimp out of balloons, straws, paper cups, pennies and masking
tape.
Science, construction,
creativity-and lots of masking tape-converge in Icanberry's
off beat world. The 36-year-old Kensington resident builds
blimps, green houses, boats, birdbaths, windmills and other
wacky projects-and then tells kids how to make their own
on his popular Web site and in his "Look, Learn and Do"
book series.
It started when
he was 6 and began asking his mom for cases of masking tape
every Christmas. At age 9, he made a 4-foot-long clip-per
ship out of milk cartons, string, straw and tape.
"Anything in
the real world that I saw, if a blimp flew by, it would
be like, wow, that's really cool. I can make my own version
of it," Icanberry said. "If you go on a field trip and see
Alcatraz, maybe you'll come home and make a little fort
out of papier-mache.
"It's about
experimentation, not just accepting what you have. I don't
just make the same paper airplane, I'm always trying to
make something different. If I can get it to fly higher
or farther, that's what's fun.
Icanberry's
project's were temporarily sidelined when he went into real
estate-buying, fixing up and selling homes for a profit.
Though he did well financially, he felt unfulfilled. After
marrying and having a son, he fell in love again with seeing
how low-tech projects could spark wonder in children.
"In this day
and age, everything needs batteries or outlets," he said.
"There are more and more distractions. What about setting
something up that leads to you creating your own fun?"
 And
thus, his book series was born. "Picnic on a Cloud" (Tricycle
Press, $14.95) and "Super Salads" (Tricycle Press, $14.95)
both came out last year. "Extraordinary Projects from Ordinary
Objects No. 1," (Tricycle Press, $14.95), will hit bookstore
shelves in a few weeks. His Web site features project instructions,
games and stories.
Evidence of
his handwork lies around his house. His wife, Stacey Loeun,
35, an office mananger, reaps plenty of rewards.
Every time I
come home, there's always something new he's made," she
said. "He makes jewelry boxes from scratch, an end table,
a table for the TV room, toys."
She said she
wasn't suprised when her husband decided to make a business
out of kiddie crafts.
"He's very good
with kids-better than me," she said. "He's a kid himself-that's
why he gets along with them.
Working with
kids is his favorite part of the job. He travels to schools
and youth centers around the Bay Area, showing kids firsthand
how to make cool stuff.
Inside the San
Mateo gymnasium, he grouped the blimp-building kids into
foursomes and showed them how to tape balloons to straws.
He then pieced together all the straws and hung paper cups
holding pennies from the bottom of the straws. Soon, the
giant contraption floated gloriously in the air.
"I like the
green balloons!" proclaimed Patrick Prasad, 7. "And I like
St. Patrick's Day because it's my name is Patrick."
A big fan of
making projects at home, Patrick added that his favorite
self-made item so far has been "cake-a lot of it."
Cameron Carter
7, slid on the slick gym floor on the seat of his sweat
pants, in a veritable frenzy over his participation in the
blimp creation.
"I learned that
you need 1,200 balloons to lift someone!" he shouted. And
what would happen if he had 1,200 balloons strapped to himself?
"I'd fly!"
Maureen Brady,
46, the art director for the Mid-Peninsula Boys and Girls
Club, survey the kids enthusiastically.
"I love to see
them excited and creative," she said. "It gets their imaginations
sparked. Everything is so structured nowadays-kids don't
just grab stuff and make things."
Mileen Zarin
9, offered her take on building the blimp and of Icanberry.
"It was cool because it went up in the air," she said. "He's
cool because he does interesting things with the balloons."
She added that
her friends would be envious upon hearing how she'd spent
her afternoon: "They'll think it's cool."
Asked what she
thought of the word cool, she said it's-well, you know.
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