1,000ft banana balloon

Montreal artist Cesar Saez hopes to send a 1,000 foot long banana dirigible into the southern sky next year to make giant loops over the Lone Star State. "I want to bring some humor to the Texas sky," said Saez, 38, who's well known in Quebec for his public works of art.

"It's an artistic statement and a spectacle. One thing I love is the issue of truth or hoax, and I love the ambiguity," said the Argentina-born artist.

But this is no joke. If all goes well, the giant bamboo and paper banana will be launched from a site in Mexico in summer 2008 and then drift eastward over Texas before it disintegrates. "This will be the largest airship ever built, and it's going to stay in the sky longer than any balloon ever did, using 19th-century technology," he said.

Even at a stratospheric altitude of 20 miles, the yellow fruit will be visible to earthbound Texans, said Saez, who so far has raised about a fifth of the estimated $1 million he needs for the project.

Some very responsible people, including the Canada Council for the Arts, which contributed $15,000, are taking him at his word.

"There's no question this is a serious artistic project," said Donna Balkan, a spokeswoman for the national arts organization. It's a work of public art, but what makes this project unusual is that he's using the sky as his venue rather than a park or street corner," she said.

Ground observers should be able to spot the airship's curved shape with the naked eye; Saez estimates the banana,known as the Geostationary Banana Over Texas, will appear 10 percent to 20 percent the size of the moon.