Supersizing funUC artists design sets for amusement parks, MTV

A Union City company of local artists has produced glow-in-the-dark golf courses, giant laser mazes, and projects for Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Cafes, Google, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Now, they have won a prestigious global award.
Custom Creations, based out of a warehouse on 32nd Street, recently won the 2009 Golden Token Award of Excellence from the International Association for the Leisure and Entertainment Industry, which provides educational programs for the advancement of businesses such as sports and entertainment centers, water parks, and children’s museums.
“We’re creating really fun themed environments,” said Custom Creations founder Giovanni Calabrese last week. The product that clinched the win was the glow-in-the-dark laser maze the company made for the Unbelieva-Bills family entertainment center in Waldwick, N.J.
The team makes most of its projects, oversized objects and figures, from giant Styrofoam blocks that are cut and sculpted, coated with Polyurethane, and expertly painted. The result could be a huge dragon to drape over the entrance to a ride, an oversized Frank Sinatra posed in a Cadillac, or an oversized hot dog with the works for the roof of a stand.
“One of the great things about what we do here is that we get to be kids every day, and we get to express ourselves being kids every day,” said Calabrese. He added that the company has also designed costumes and runways in the past.

Glowing golf courses and pirate adventures

Calabrese said he started the business as a hobby 18 years ago.
“We have grown from doing props for local bars to amusement centers around the world,” he said. The company now includes six full-time artists and several freelancers working on about three or four projects at a time for an international clientele.
Their hottest item, said Calabrese, is a glow-in-the-dark mini golf course, and they have seven in the works now, including three for a client in Germany.
“In our concepts, you are in an adventure,” he said. “You are going from one scenario to another.” He added that clients often ask for underwater or pirate themed designs and that his team tries to take those basic concepts to another level.
“We get really creative,” said Calabrese. “I guess you could say crazy creative.”
He added that his team works closely with clients to take a basic idea into full form.
“We work so hard at what we do,” he said. “If you do what you love, the hours don’t matter.”
The company was even hired to create a 20-foot-tall astronaut for the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. To finish the project on time, Calabrese said he stayed up for five consecutive days with absolutely no sleep.
The most unusual project the team was ever asked to do, said Calabrese, was to make garbage can centerpieces for the wedding of a public works employee.
“That’s probably the strangest thing I ever did,” he said. “We’ve built tremendous projects that are so oversized. But the weirdest or most unusual was that.”

Amanda Staab can be reached at astaab@hudsonreporter.com.

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