By Rebecca Roussell
NYT Institute

It’s a two-week party, but a 50-week job in New Orleans. It is Mardi Gras, the revelry that began in 1827. It is a massive celebration that takes time, money and many helping hands to be successful. And the biggest part of Mardi Gras is the floats.

Joseph III, Barry and Tana Barth grew up in the midst of Mardi Gras and the business of building and designing floats.

“My dad used to have a small float that he built and pulled it around with all of the kids in the neighborhood on it on Mardi Gras day,” said Barry Barth, 51, president of Barth Bros. Artists Designers and Decorators.

Mardi Gras was definitely a family affair and became the career choice for the Barth siblings.

“My father started the business and my brother and I began Barth Bros. Artists Designers Decorators, in 1975,” Barth said.

The Barth siblings are still around today, designing floats, using papier-mache.

“We felt that Mardi Gras lost its traditional style,” Barth said. The company is not the largest float designer in the city, but the family is proud about remaining unique.

The Barth-form of papier-mache modeling was a process devised by his father in the 1960s, Barth said.

The papier-mache method is the process of taking sheets of brown craft paper that has different weights, Barth said. The thinner paper is used for detailed work like flower petals or small sculptures. The larger float-head sculptures are made of wood first and then sculpted with the paper.

The paper is then coated with a contact adhesive or glue, and then hung to dry on a wire. When the paper is drying, Barth said, it binds to itself, but does not stick to hands. After the paper is prepared, then it is ready to mold and shape on the floats. The Barth-form process allows for the papier-mache to dry quickly.

It takes about three weeks to build a wooden frame float on platform wheels. It takes about two weeks to completely decorate a float after it is built and whited-out, Barth said. Krewes, groups who organize and participate in Mardi Gras, usually rent floats from $3,500 to $12,000 per float, depending on the complexity of it, Barth said. Krewes that own their floats usually spend about $50,000 on preparation for the entire parade.

The materials to build and design the floats come from various supply companies across the nation, Barth said.

The brothers build and design floats for 10 parades in the New Orleans area. Their clientele include the Krewes of Rhea, Perseus, Oshun, Iris and Ponchartrain.

Barth said Mardi Gras is the only holiday that packs the hotels with tourists from all over and there is minimal cost to the city.

“It (Mardi Gras) is completely funded by private individual clubs, which is very unique compared to other parades around the city,” Barth said.

The Mardi Gras business is a profitable one for the Barth family as well.

“During Mardi Gras, we gross just about under $1 million,” Barry Barth said. The company usually produces 150 to 200 floats per season.

In 1979, the police strike caused most of the Mardi Gras parades to relocate to other parishes or not roll at all. Artists had to redesign the floats for the next season.

“We got paid to do the floats, but we were still disappointed that we had to start from scratch,” Barth said.

Weather is also a factor that cannot be controlled, Barth said.

“Sometimes you can reschedule, sometimes you can’t,” he said.

In 1984, the Barth Brothers designed two mermaid statues for the entrance gates of The World’s Fair in New Orleans. They were also invited in 1985 by the city of New Orleans to the Louisiana Folklife Festival, held at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

The Barth Brothers have extended their services nationwide and have even shipped floats to Honduras.

Mastering the Design

In the early years of Mardi Gras, the floats were old farm wagons. Today, floats have evolved to intricate wooden frames and even steel. Kern Studios owns a fleet of tractors with generators that carry 25 kilowatts of power to pull super floats. The wheels are made of strong rubber and latex to add more protection to prevent flat tires.

The evolution of a Mardi Gras float begins in the mind, and ultimately develops into a mystical idea on wheels.

“There is so much to do and so many parades, we stay busy always,” said Henri Schindler, an artistic director for the Rex, Hermes, Babylon and Endymion parades

Schindler is a part of the masterminds behind the elaborate floats that cruise down the streets of New Orleans. He works with illustrators and artists to make float sketches come to life from the drawing board. Schindler is in charge of creating themes for the krewes and their parades. After Mardi Gras, his job begins all over again.

Schindler works closely with Blaine Kern, CEO of Kern Studios to make Mardi Gras happen every year.

“We meet with the krewes every spring to firm up a theme for the next two years,” Schindler said. “So there is always something in the works.”

Once the theme is decided, Schindler takes his ideas from stories and tales he researched; he then looks at floats from the past years. Afterward, an illustrator draws the floats on sketch paper as small thumbnails.

Once the thumbnails are chosen, they are drawn as individual sketches and become an intricate replica of the floats to be decorated for the upcoming carnival season. The sketches are then painted with bright colors and final changes are made to the sketch.

“Once the sketches are complete, the floats are covered with white paint, or whited-out,” Schindler said. Floats are prepared for painting and decoration and are often reused from previous years to create new ones.

The float painter takes charcoal sticks and blocks out areas that need coloring. He makes notations such as “yellow,” “green,” etc. The basic color is then sprayed on the float and detailed work is done with theatrical paints.

Concerning preparation for the 2006 Mardi Gras season, Schindler said he feels pretty confident about being ahead in schedule for painting. All of the floats for the Rex parade should be done by the end of the summer, he said. But finishing early always depends on when Mardi Gras day, also known as Fat Tuesday, falls. “Last year we worked up until the end,” Schindler said.

The 2005 Mardi Gras season began the weekend of January 21, which is considered to be very early. Mardi Gras day was February 8. Schindler said there is more breathing room for 2006 because the season will begin the weekend of February 16, with Mardi Gras day occurring on February 8.

The Big Kern

For Blaine Kern, saying Mardi Gras is his hobby would be an understatement. “God’s been so good to me beyond my wildest dreams and I am having fun,” Kern, CEO of Kern Studios, said.

Today at 78, Kern has overseen a multi-million dollar empire that is not only known in New Orleans and the nation, but also around the world. He’s been deemed the title, “Mr. Mardi Gras,” and under the umbrella of Kern Studios, there is Blaine Kern Artists, Mardi Gras World and Kern International.

Since his first parade in 1948, Kern has had his hand in over 2,000 parades around the city alone, providing floats for close to 60 parades each Mardi Gras season.

“The themes are theatrical,” Kern said. “We try to make each krewe have its own personality.”

Kern has worked with Rex, which is the oldest parade in New Orleans, for 52 years. Rex began parading in 1872. Their floats are made of the more traditional form with papier-mache, but the larger, newer krewes expect extravagant floats to bring out the theme as well.

“The larger clubs like Endymion and Bacchus require larger, double-decker floats,” Kern said. The more traditional single-deck floats are used in older parades and for those who have smaller clubs.

Kern has traveled the world and brought artistic ideas from various countries back to New Orleans. The ideas come to life through super floats such as the Leviathan – a, steel serpent from the Old Testament of the Bible – unique to the Orpheus parade every year. The float, which includes fiber-optic lights, took four to five months to build and design and cost about $650,000, Kern said.

Kern spreads the Mardi Gras bug to places all over the nation like Universal Studios, Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the Nickelodeon Parade in California and many others.

Kern International has allowed the mogul to build and design floats for the Shanghai Festival of the Moon parade last September in China.

“We don’t ever shut the place down,” Kern said.