Everything we do is a balloon

Year: 2010 - ongoing

When out walking, driving or even canoeing, I sometimes chance across the burst or deflated remains of foil printed helium balloons.

These balloons have been created for all manner of celebrations with messages bearing 'Get well soon' or 'Enjoy your retirement' to birthdays all the way up the ages. I have found balloons wrapped around trees announcing the launch of Spiderman 3, Cinderella in a ditch or Minnie Mouse in a field half a mile away from Stonehenge. All of them have been sold with a purpose to add pleasure and happiness to an event or experience. Then, whether by design or accident, they are let go and rapidly fly off borne away by the wind for me to eventually discover days, weeks or even years later snagged, faded and in pieces in some forest far away from their celebratory point of origin.

Nearly any event can apparently now be enhanced with the addition of a helium balloon. These balloons have become markers of what we value to celebrate. Every time I find a dead balloon, I find the memory of an event that was.

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