Design
This Thanksgiving, Detroit Is Overrun by Gigantic Papier-Mâché Heads
The painted busts march down Woodward Avenue as part of the holiday parade.
Dave Danielson stood on a ladder, studying a face bigger than his whole body. He balled damp newspaper into the shape of an eyeball, molded nostrils, and smoothed the top of a lip.
In the Parade Company warehouse in Detroit—a lofty 200,000 square feet of floats and costumes in various stages of construction—Danielson, the company’s former art director, was fashioning a papier-mâché bust of former Lions football star Barry Sanders. Sanders’s larger-than-life likeness was slated to walk in the Thanksgiving parade on the shoulders of a member of the Big Heads Corps, a battalion of local professionals who pony up with donations to score a spot among the parade’s cast of characters tromping along Woodward Avenue.