Molly Balloons Wants You to Boobytrap the Mundane and Spread the Bozo Gospel – PRINT Magazine

Molly Balloons is the first person I’ve ever interviewed who took the call from a whiskey bar. When I gave her a ring a few months ago, she answered with an effervescent delight that radiated from her end of the line in a way I could only expect from someone who makes a living as a balloon artist.

“I’m in Vail, feeling amaaaazing!” she told me, no doubt sipping on a cocktail.

I spiritually can only full shebang.”

Molly Balloons is a Kansas City-born Los Angeles transplant who lives with a group of artists in the Arts District neighborhood of Downtown. Or, as she put it, “I live in a clown warehouse with a stacked lineup of freak weirdo genius roommates.” It’s clear from her over-the-top balloon creations that she’s thriving in this environment and has found her balloon-loving tribe.

To kick off Pride month, Molly hosted a balloon fashion show with the creative township Creatington, cleverly entitled Balloonciaga. She runs her own balloon business, creating decor, sculptures, and balloon couture entertainment for anyone who can handle her vision. “I work with anyone who needs more pizzazz and fabulousness at whatever they’re doing,” she told me. “I physically and spiritually can’t hold myself back from balling out on a project. I cannot do small potatoes because I won’t stop. I can only give you a full shebang because I spiritually can only full shebang.”

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I was understandably overflowing with questions for this uniquely flamboyant, creative soul and jumped right in. Our conversation is below, in which Molly Balloons is every bit as wise as she is boisterous. By the end of our call, she’d invited me to go to New Orleans with her for Easter. It wasn’t in the cards for me this time, but if the offer’s still on the table next year, I might. Who could possibly say no to Molly Balloons?

The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

You were just in New Orleans for Mardi Gras— tell me about that! Why do you love Mardi Gras so much?

I do very few things religiously, but Mardi Gras is one of those things. I go to New Orleans every year, at least for a month, basking in the bliss of being alive as a creative soul in the best creative community I’ve ever found. Mardi Gras is whatever the opposite of gatekeeping is. It encourages so much enthusiastic participation and flagrant display of imagination because it’s intentionally accessible.

I find it to be a very profound value match; you’re not as valuable as the brand you’re wearing or as the thing you know about. You’re as valuable as what you bring to the community. I just really like how Mardi Gras celebrates self-expression.

Did you create one of your signature, fabulous balloon fits for this year’s Mardi Gras?

Every year at Mardi Gras, I have this artistic balloon breakthrough with a technique because there’s so much power to low-stakes, self-expressive art. I’m not going to do what I do for Mardi Gras the rest of the year. I’m not going to run the hits I get paid to do at Mardi Gras. I’m going to do some weird bullshit that I’ve never tried that could go in any direction.

So, two years ago, I figured out monster costumes. I always wanted to do wearable, couture monsters, and then finally, Boom! Sha-blam! There was a monster parade here. Then, last year, I figured out this technique I call sprinkles, creating strands of pearls that are really elevated and super textured. Now, they’re in everything I do.

This year, I started putting helium in my costumes! Like, duh! Like, literally, duh. What was I doing before now? So now everything has helium. I’d never really worked with helium before this because it’s dumb for installation. It’s an inefficient way to get height. Using helium for installation work? Gross. Small potatoes, uncreative. But using it for costuming? Oh, my God! I’m very excited about having helium in my couture work. My costume this year was 14 feet tall. I was like, Oh my God, this is so fun!

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Have you always craved this sort of show-stopping, visual representation of yourself? Where did that impulse originate?

I used to be afraid of it. I’m from Kansas City and was a colorful fish in a bland pond. I was the rainbow sheep of the family, and I really enjoyed that role. But I used to be afraid of the idea of, When everyone is special, how am I going to be special? But in the last couple chapters of my life, I’ve come to bask in the bliss of creative community and upping each others’ game. I genuinely don’t mind being out in front, but sometimes it’s so uplifting to look around you and be like, Damn, everybody’s bringing their weirdest, best, most imaginative shit. That’s why I love, love, love living in LA.

I feel really encouraged, inspired, and excited in LA. I think it’s important to create art in community spaces. Art is an inherent luxury, even though I firmly believe it’s essential. A classic marquee of a golden era in any society is when arts thrive. The “art world” can modulate this effect toward capitalism, but I find that to be absolutely uninteresting.

Why balloons? How did you first come to balloons as a medium for your art?

It started forever ago. As a kid, I learned how to use balloons as a craft. The difference I consider between craft and art is self-expression. It doesn’t matter how good your art is or isn’t; as soon as it’s coming from your own soul and your own imagination, that’s when it bridges from craft to art.

As a kid, I learned balloons alongside macrame, origami, ceramics, and whatever else. Then, one fateful Christmas, my mom got me a how-to-make-balloons book. When I was 14, going on 15, and headed into high school, I was trying to figure out a conduit for how I felt on the inside. I was dying for a schtick! I’ve always had a very loud, boisterous, and unafraid personality type, and I’ve always been a social risk-taker, so I picked up balloons again at that time, just by happenstance, and it was such a perfect fit. I had no idea how perfect of a fit it was or the sort of future I would have with balloons, but it worked great then. I was like, Oh, my God, a schtick! Put me in, coach! A mobile platform for me to berserk my personality!

So, I nurtured it as a side hustle throughout high school. I called a restaurant and lied. I said, “Hi, I’m a local, professional balloon artist. Would you like to hire me for kids’ events?” And they were like, “Uhhhh, sure!” So it started the OG way— I was a 15 and 16-year-old girl with a balloon apron making dogs and swords at a restaurant on a Tuesday night.

Then I quickly shifted into wearables. I realized you could change the way people feel a lot more by giving them something to wear than something to hold, and you can elevate the way they’re moving through the world when they’re suddenly wearing a balloon headdress or wings; you’re going to change the next however many hours of their life more than if you give them something to hold. So very quickly, balloon hats became a driving force of my ethos.

Also, a central draw of this medium to me is that balloons have a high impact on how they play, but their footprint is small. I only use latex balloons (I don’t use any Mylar), and latex is rubber, not plastic. It is 100% biodegradable. My balloon dresses, after they deflate after a couple of months, fit on a Barbie.

How did you leap from balloon headdresses at kids’ parties to the balloon couture in which you’ve now made a name for yourself?

I figured out balloon couture dresses before my senior year because I wanted to be Homecoming Queen. So I learned how to make balloon dresses and wore my first one to my senior Homecoming— it was turquoise and pink, my favorite colors to this day. And it worked! I won Homecoming Queen, though that was probably more because I was cashing in on being funny and kind to people for four years.

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Of course, the girl in the balloon dress will win Homecoming Queen!

Right? It’d be bad for the storytelling of humanity if I didn’t win! I needed to win! It’s not important to y’all’s narrative like it’s important to my narrative! And I deserved it!

Academia was never really my scene, and I already had a successful balloon business, so I didn’t consider college for more than 20 seconds. I was like, ugh, sounds terrible. And it sounded profoundly constricting. I’m from Kansas with protective parents; for my whole life, I’ve been chomping at the bit to meet as many people as possible, try as many things as possible, feel as many things as possible, and touch as many things as possible, and cause as many smiles as possible. So like, no, there’s no way I’m going to go to fucking KU— gross!

I believe I was put on this earth, in an abstract sense, to lead the parade.

Where do you think that mentality comes from? Do you just inherently have that mindset?

I think part of it was reactionary as a resistance to my upbringing. Because my world wasn’t very glorious, big, fast, or risky, there was no danger. It is just my nature; I feel a strong calling to stir up joy. In an abstract sense, I was put on this earth to lead the parade. Somebody has to! We didn’t crawl out of the ocean to be the only animal that buys things; we came here to have a goddamn good time. It’s easy to forget that because we have a lot of things in our way, there’s a lot of filler and formality— jobs, school, Pinterest. It’s hard to bring ourselves back into the here and now, and balloons are just a hack for that. It’s crazy how effective balloons can be as a medium to bring people into the now because they’re temporary. You don’t enjoy a balloon hat later; it’s right now, baby! It’s now or never. Never is fine, but now is better.

Balloons have been a super powerful tool for me over the last 12 and a half years to call people into the here and now. Because that’s all life ever is; what you do with your day is what you do with your life. It’s important to remember: a lot of life is a Tuesday, baby! I’m having a great Tuesday right now, by the way. Tuesday is my favorite day of the week! Because it’s an extra credit day. There’s nothing technically special about a Tuesday; it’s like bonus points. Anything that goes down on a Tuesday, it’s like, Holy shit! And it’s a Tuesday? Damn! Every other day has a thing to it, but if you can have the most ballin’ time on a Tuesday, that’s a big win.

I’m a big believer in putting energy into the mundane, because not everyone has the good fortune of having this jet set life of whimsy.

And then, if you don’t, it’s okay because it’s just a Tuesday!

Right, there’s power in those low stakes. I was thinking about how if you can make the doctor’s office super fun, that’s a bigger win than making a bar even more fun; the bar was already fun. The departure from an un-fun doctor’s office to fun, you create a whiplash on that fun spectrum versus places that are already fun. I’m a big believer in putting energy into the mundane because not everyone has the good fortune of having a jet-set life of whimsy. That’s been my focus, but it’s not everybody’s. It’s important to me to boobytrap the mundane.

Is there a moment within your balloon art practice when you were particularly successful in going to the proverbial doctor’s office and turning it into a party?

In April 2020, when we were in the deep end of a mental health crisis worldwide, when it started to get really serious, and we were all not well, we desperately needed to engage with each other, and we desperately needed to be entertained. It was important to find a way to do that without being irresponsible, so I got this idea from a New Orleans friend to have a COVID parade. It was every Sunday in Kansas City, and it was a masked parade with a 10-foot minimum between each “quaran-team,” with bonus points if your costume was 6 feet or wider.

It was important because it was a drop of color, life, and connection in this barren wasteland of emotion. I’d churn out these huge balloon costumes. Instead of making one beautiful, epic, detailed costume, I made 10 or 12 huge things. Balloons are the perfect parade medium because they’re so lightweight and expansive and cover so much negative space, but they have such a tiny footprint, so they’re not wasteful, and we just paraded through the streets! There were different pods of people with speakers because it was really spread out. And we all just needed a good walk; if nothing else, it was a two-hour walk.

It was one of my, if not my favorite, projects ever. It was the light when it was the darkest.

You’re already massively successful and have gotten so far as Molly Balloons. Do you have thoughts about what’s next?

The most basic answer is to create as much joy as possible. I call it the Bozo Gospel. I was put on earth to spread the Bozo Gospel. Pet peeves are out; pet faves are in. If I die in, like, 20 seconds, that’d be the thing I’d want people to preach the hardest and to have live on. Also, don’t wait ‘til later. Later is fake. Later isn’t real.

Charlotte is a New England expat currently living in Los Angeles, CA with her cat, Joan Cusack. She is a power-clashing maximalist with an inordinate disdain for the color navy. When she's not writing about ad campaigns and colorways you can find her scouring estate sales or attempting to teach herself calligraphy.