Art Gets Racier, Spacier

About half a dozen people are dressing up as kinetic art for Halloween this year in Long Beach. What will they wear?

Some will be witches driving a sculpture they designed and built: a 10-foot-long bike with outriggers and floats so it can be paddled through the surf.

Others will be Martians in a spaceship, a sculpture six feet in diameter that is also designed for land and water. These and other equally creative people and bizarre machines will compete on Halloween in the Kinetic Art Sculpture Challenge, a race for adults whose lives seem to have been profoundly influenced by the movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

The race is part of the Long Beach Halloween festival beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday. The two-day party will feature live bands, ethnic and American food, carnival rides, animals, prizes, games and contests, clowns, mimes, jugglers, puppets, face-painting, arts and crafts, a canned food sculpture contest, and, of course, the Kinetic Art Sculpture Challenge.

To enter the race, competitors’ machines must be people-powered and able to traverse water, mud, sand, grass and city streets. They cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $10,000 to build and transport and are usually subsidized by a corporate sponsor, event organizer Mark Weinger said.

One of those helping launch the spaceship machine (dubbed “They Came From Outer Space”) is Jennifer Borden, 30, a Los Angeles receptionist. Borden has competed in several kinetic sculpture races, including the world championships in Northern California.

“It’s an amazing amount of work and fun,” said Borden, who has devoted 12- and 14-hour days to building kinetic art.

One particularly keen group of challengers is the GloryHogs, Borden said. Their machine is a 12-foot-long tricycle contraption whose handlebars are festooned with a cartoon pig head. To make it float, its builders have designed it to resemble a Hawaiian canoe, with large pontoons that lower as it enters the water.

And enter the water they will. The six machines and their crews will assemble at the starting line at Shoreline Drive and Pine Avenue, dash to the beach at 1st Place and drive into the water at Lifeguard Station 1. From there, they travel south about two miles to the Belmont Pier, where they will paddle ashore for demonstrations and a safety check, Weinger said.

Then they will cross a man-made mountain of sand, re-enter the water, swing around the downtown marina, paddle into Shoreline Aquatic Park, enter Rainbow Lagoon and land via an obstacle course of mud. They finish at the Mardi Gras restaurant.

About 20,000 people are expected to attend the festival, which runs Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the shores of Rainbow Lagoon, next to the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center.

The Kinetic Art Sculpture Challenge begins at noon Saturday and is expected to last until 4 p.m. Although admission to the race and festival is free, spectators and competitors are asked to bring non-perishable food items to be distributed to needy people. For more information about the festival, sponsored by the International Mardi Gras Assn. of Long Beach, call (310) 983-8600.