Balloons in BOLD

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"The Fount of Our Despair" will be hosted at The Orange Show's historic Beer Can House. This balloon installation tries to reconcile the existential threat of fascist America with our desire for villains simultaneously concrete and wholly unfathomable.

On view September 19th - 21st with opening reception and artist talk September 19th at 7:30pm.

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Excited to announce the first of two upcoming Houston installations. "Rift", hosted by @sip8thwonder, is a contemplation on the irreversible nature of destruction and the distance created between our present and the torn down past. "Rift" will be on display for one weekend only, August 29th - 31st. Visitors are also encouraged to observe the build process Aug 26th - 28th.

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So proud of what the students at Archway Academy and I were able to put together this year. Archway Academy is a Sober High School—the largest recovery school in the country—and every year, they bring in a balloon artist to help their students create something amazing for prom.

This is my 2nd year working with them and the first where I got to work collaboratively with the students from the beginning to come up with this balloon build.

Its so rewarding to see the students engage their artistic abilities and participate in the teamwork required to put something like this together.

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Coupon code BOLD2025 gets 15% off all prints at my store, valid until I return from Twist and Shout on the 23rd. https://balloonsinbold.com/store/

Supporting me on Patreon gains you access to 25% off till the end of the month https://www.patreon.com/BalloonsinBOLD

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"The Long Night Takes Its Hold" I'm afraid it's already too late to save this country. "I told you so" is a cold comfort in the face of such cruelty and destruction.

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"The Revolution Will Be LiveStreamed"

Part three of three in my Funny Business series.

The title derives from the 1971 spoken word song "the revolution will not be televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. It struck me just how different instigating change is now in the era of social media from the civil rights era. The previous methods of manufactured consent through legacy media has been replaced with astroturf campaigns, skewed algorithms, and floods of bots.

Its all well and good to ask "When will enough people be moved into enacting revolutionary change?", but before that one needs to ask, "Is revolution even possible in our current social landscape and what does that revolution look like?".

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"Quarterly Profits Are At An All Time High"

Part two of three in my Funny Business series.

The self-destructive nature of late stage capitalism escalates.

The third part in the series is available to view early only on my Patreon

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To Bring Forth Sweetness, A Prophet Slain (re-edit)

It's hard sometimes to let go of the way you wanted your art to go, rather than let your art be the best version it can be. The first part in this series worked so well with the balloon sculpture overlaid onto its companion painting. The second sculpture and painting just didn't fit together the same way. But a day of re-cropping and lighting tweaks later, I think it has much more impact and readability this way.

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Artificial Growth

Part one of three in my Funny Business series.

This series focuses on the increasingly cannibalistic and counterproductive trends of chasing short term profits over sustainable long term growth and the well-being of the general populace. Modeled by my wonderful partner, Minty Minded

The rest of the series is viewable now on my new Patreon!

Support me at Patreon for exclusive goodies and early access to the rest of the Funny Business series

Get more from Balloons in BOLD on Patreon

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To Bring Forth Sweetness: A Prophet Slain

Part two of three in my series on growing up in a cult.

For further context you can read my the artist statement for part one here https://www.tumblr.com/balloons-in-bold/756747631527624704/a-struggle-in-secret-the-wedding-riddle-part-one?source=share

Growing up in a cult can be really damaging. I struggled through many confusing and lonely times, but there was also a lot of good. Everything joyous and nurturing about my childhood was a result of my parent’s mindful parenting. The choices they made can be traced back to their experience in the cult, and their desire to give us better than they were given. Harsh parenting, high control structures, and the inability to rely on family during their upbringing manifested conversely in an environment for us of love and support, a healthy celebration of novel experiences and guilty pleasures, and a rock solid family unit that could weather any storm.

And storms we did weather. After leaving my birthplace of Brazil, we moved to Taiwan, a locale that felt far more like home to my parents who had spent so many years in Asia before I was born. My mom grew up in Macau and met my dad during his time in Japan. Two years after making the move to Taiwan, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake rocked the island, displacing us and tens of thousands of others from their homes. While staying in refugee camps, my parents, displaying a rugged resilience cultivated by the cult’s outsider status, immediately got to work lifting people’s spirits with songs, clown shows, and distributing balloons. 

Twisting balloons was a widely taught skill in the cult, both as a way of making money, and as a form of community outreach. Balloons, music, and selling literature were the primary modes of support for many large commune homes due to the cult’s restrictive policies heavily discouraging the working of regular “systemite” jobs. Despite Asia being home in their hearts, my parents had to move us to America, to seek medical care for various health problems they were struggling with. Ever since the early days of the cult, David Berg prophesied a coming doom and destruction for America, which he styled as the whore of Babylon from Revelations 17. He preached against the relentless wars waged in foreign nations, and against the complacency of the American Evangelical churches in ignoring Jesus’s more radical teachings of asceticism and acceptance, styling himself as an iconoclast and table flipper in the image of Jesus rebuking the Pharisee establishment. I still carry these sentiments with me today. I was fed anti-America messaging throughout publications and music which worked with the isolating, not-of-this-world lifestyle to create an identity of elite separation from the country in which we lived. This, despite the often comically rabid christian-nationalist, pro Imperialist content found in the a-Beka homeschool curriculum we used. Cognitive dissonance and lack of certainty in what I was being taught would be an ever growing thorn in my worldview throughout my time in the cult. More important than the inconveniently present patriotism, was the lack of education about evolution in our curriculum. More than any other outside teaching, evolution was maligned as the most evil and dehumanizing work of Satan that we had to be indoctrinated against. As a supplement to the homeschooling material, we were given the Kent Hovind creationist seminars, which I, an enthusiastic student of science, practically memorized by heart. Many things could have ended up catalyzing my doubts in college, but learning about evolution from an unbiased perspective had me realizing I couldn’t rely on the trust I had in the worldview that had been forced on me, and the only way forward was to reevaluate everything from the ground up. I wrote in the previous part in this series on the isolation and loneliness I experienced as a result of being homeschooled. The limited opportunities for socialization was made up for with an encouragement of extracurricular learning. Since an early age I was taught how to teach myself, utilizing the library system, internet forums, and pirated software. I became skilled in Photoshop, 3D modeling, music, and eventually balloons.

Balloon twisting was a skill taught to me at the age of 16 by my parents. Many ex-cult members have negative feelings about balloons due to its association with the cult, but I value the connection as the convenient illustration of the unique circumstances throughout my family history that led to me being the person I am today. A history tracing back to my great grandfather, David Berg, who got his start preaching to wayward hippies at Huntington Beach in the late 60s. As well intentioned as the group may have started out, the radical views on sex that “Grandpa” developed, when combined with the all encompassing authoritarian nature of the cult he created, led to some truly stomach churning abuses. I was shielded by abuse in part due to the careful parenting of my parents, and due to the doctrinal overhauls that took place in previous generations after much international backlash and public scrutiny. A story of institutionalized abuse, coverup, reform, and gaslighting that I uncovered piece by piece as I was given more freedom to read the cult’s antiquated teachings. David Berg kept his likeness hidden for much of the cult’s existence in order to evade consequences for the abuses he perpetrated and made commonplace. Only after his passing did the cult release a photo book so his many thousands of followers could finally know the leader they’d been so dedicated to. When in hiding, his appearance was substituted with a friendly and wise old anthropomorphic lion character. This is the lion I would render in balloon form, to burn the man in effigy, mixing both crucifixion and heretic-at-the-stake imagery, a fitting end to such a self-styled rebel prophet. Out of his disemboweled corpse flows honey, like honey from the lion’s carcass that Samson would construct his riddle around. The honey meets with a hexagonal honeycomb pattern composed entirely of classic balloon dogs. The iconographic symbol of balloon art, connecting my family’s past in the cult with the medium I sculpt with today. The large 6 x 7 foot painting that makes up the background is a more abstract form of the sculpture’s themes of beauty and goodness derived from chaos and despair. The various textures are created using many different techniques and acrylic mediums. Palette knives, piping bags, and custom hexagon silicone molds were used with modeling paste, acrylic gels, and crackle paste to evoke the gore and viscera of a decaying corpse alongside the life and structure of a buzzing beehive.

Working on a project over both the long and short term, with paintings that take months, and balloon sculptures that take days, puts in perspective the complexity of understanding someone’s story. To truly understand someone, you need to take in both their immediate lived and felt experiences, and the sometimes long and complicated history and context within which those events take place. Creating this balloon sculpture for display while also setting up the rest of my exhibition posed more of a challenge than if I were to have worked solely in private. But it  all came together and I’m glad so many people got a chance to see it in person. There will be one final balloon sculpture/painting part in the series but I’ll be taking my time with it and setting up an event sometime in the future for its exhibition. Maybe as part of a group show; we’ll see. 

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See this piece and much more at my exhibition next week at the Jung Center of Houston. Opening Reception is tomorrow from 3pm-6pm! Funded in part by the Houston Arts Alliance through the Houston Mayor Office of Cultural Affairs with drinks provided thanks to Saint Arnold Brewing. Can't wait to see y'all there!

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Just a few weeks to go! Excited to announce drinks will be provided for the exhibition with thanks to Saint Arnold Brewing Company. Join me at The Jung Center - Houston for the opening reception August 19th 3pm-6pm. I'll also be giving a talk on closing day, August 24th at 2pm. Funded in part by HoustonMOCA through the Houston Arts Alliance.

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A Struggle In Secret: The Wedding Riddle

Part one of three in my series on growing up in a cult.

My upbringing in The Family International, formerly known as The Children of God, was a mixed bag. I had such a loving and supporting family, and many incredible experiences traveling and performing. Most of the latent effects of the isolation of homeschooling and living in a country with an especially difficult language barrier surfaced during my later integration into "normal" American life.

David Berg, my great-grandfather and the founder of The Children of God, died several years before I was born. Nonetheless, he remained an all important religious figure in our lives, behind only Jesus himself. My education and spiritual development was buttressed by decades of propaganda material, yet my cult experience wasn't as intense as previous generations. My parents did the best they could to shield us kids from the abuses they went through. The 2000’s marked the waning years of a cult that once boasted ten thousand members. The bustling commune homes that dotted the globe became fewer and less populated. Because of the cult’s lessened omnipresence, I wasn’t provided sufficient opportunities to develop my social and romantic skills properly, which, compounded with introverted tendencies, left me with few substantial relationships, a problem that persisted long after we had left the cult.

It took several years to stop blaming myself for my stunted development, and even longer to move forward on a path of self improvement. I had crippling social anxiety that I still feel clinging to me occasionally. Pulling up to a party or other social function, I’d feel jolts of electricity shoot through my body, and the adrenaline would drain my brain of coherent thoughts, leaving only an urgent sense of dread. My journey of self discovery and search for community and connection was made so much more difficult by the lack of shared experiences I had with those around me. Every time I mentioned my past, and how, no I can’t relate to your funny high school anecdote, I mostly got blank stares and a rush to change the topic. A surface level explanation didn’t come close to adequately bridging the gaps separating myself from those around me.

2022 Was when I determined that, in order to properly move forward, I needed to confront the remnants of isolation and alienation in as direct a way as possible. As an artist, that meant telling my story through symbolic imagery. Like a divine revelation, the story of Samson fighting the lion (Judges 14:5) entered my mind. A struggle in secret that no one at his wedding had knowledge of, and when presented with the riddle, had no chance of coming up with an answer (Judges 14:12-14).

The painting was at first only meant to be a quick solution as background imagery but grew into so much more. I layered to the collage portions of the canvas to tell the journey that stretched back thousands of years, starting with papyrus fragments, followed by King James bible pages, old MO letters, Life With Grandpa pages, and topped off with the A-beka christian fundamentalist homeschooling material. Expanding outwards and constricting inwards, leaving me trapped and isolated. The border has its cracks, fracturing under the cumulative dissonance of the inevitable internal struggle. The painted portion leads towards the center, down into a pit so deep, climbing out feels almost impossible.

I wanted to push the physicality of the balloon sculpture in a way I’d never done before. I drew inspiration from ukiyo-e images of samurai clashing with tigers, intertwining the two subjects in violence, hands grasping and claws slashing so deep that the two become one. I portrayed in Samson’s face, the rage and frustration I felt pent up over so many years, being released with the urgency and determination of a warrior assured that the fight is already his.

This first part in the series was finished and photographed a while ago in private, now being used as marketing material to promote my upcoming exhibition where I’ll be displaying the second painting and sculpture in the series. The next part, “Out Of The Strong, Something Sweet”, is an attempt to harmonize the darkest parts of my family legacy with the wonder and excitement, the joy and support I experienced throughout my upbringing in The Family International.

Please join me at The Jung Center of Houston, Texas for the exhibition, funded in part by Houston Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs through Houston Arts Alliance, for the opening reception August 19th, 3pm to 6pm; and don’t miss my talk on the closing day, August 24th at 2pm to hear more about my art and journey.

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So much of my process is comprised of momentary bursts of inspiration proceeded by many dozens of hours of tedium.

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The Scribe

This was the third of three pieces displayed for my balloon art exhibition, MESSENGERS. The show highlighted three mysterious bringers of truth and wisdom whose motives are meant to be viewed through a critical lens.

Half the work of coming up with ideas is staying receptive to inspiration. The inspiration for The Scribe came from an image here on reddit of a lava cave in Hawaii that had the look of a pit opening straight to hell with the souls of the damned being dragged under. Looks rad, has religious connotations, and most importantly, a chance to do something interesting with the lighting. I wanted each piece to feel like its own fully formed artwork, so unique lighting was a must.

I turned to demonology for more inspiration, incorporating my practice of Satanism as a reinforcement of the themes of caution against jumping to conclusions based on aesthetics. Modern-day Satanism is not about Satan as a real existent entity. It’s about valuing humanistic ethics and highlighting the hypocrisy of christian nationalists. I pulled inspiration from Gamigin, who sometimes takes the form of an anthropomorphic horse with multiple sets of arms, along with the pale spindliness of Gollum, given this would be a cave-dwelling creature.

I imagined the creature as a Moses character, retreating to an out of reach locale to bring back a message transcribed from an unknowable source. Thus was born The Scribe. The transference of ancient wisdom through individuals across history is an inevitably corrupting and distorting force. A fact that messengers of such wisdom work hard to belie.

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The Lightbringer

This was the second of three pieces displayed for my balloon art exhibition, MESSENGERS. The show highlighted three mysterious bringers of truth and wisdom whose motives are meant to be viewed through a critical lens.

The Lightbringer is a figure dressed in clerical robes with a goat skull head pouring a magical liquid into the abandoned well. The mystery of the piece, while thought provoking, is meant to allude to messengers who purposefully obfuscate their meaning as a way of weeding out all but the most dedicated followers, while also avoiding the wrath of an establishment threatened by a radical message.

Mathew 13:13

This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand."

The roses, while enticing, are surrounded by hostile thorns. The well is filled with light but drawing from the well is made difficult due to the frayed rope where once hung a bucket.

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The Council

This was the first of three pieces displayed for my balloon art exhibition, MESSENGERS. The show highlighted three mysterious bringers of truth and wisdom whose motives are meant to be viewed through a critical lens.

The Council was the first centerpiece seen by the viewer, and the one the most connected with the dark forest scenery. It incorporates fairytale elements; a lone maiden, a gold coin payment, and magical forest critters. The messenger here is The Owl King, inspired by imagery of the demon Stolas. He demands payment in the form of gold coins stashed in a tree hollow, a space where I could add an interesting lighting element to the scene. The necessity of payment here calls for skepticism. With material gain comes ulterior motives.

The shadow animals inhabiting the scene add to the mystery. Do they stand in judgment? Are they concerned for the maiden? Are they former recipients of the owl king’s wisdom? Their monochrome visages supply a blank canvas for the audience to project their feelings onto.