Lifestyle
Balloon Art You Won’t Find at a Children’s Birthday Party
“It’s funny how little memory I have of balloons growing up,” said DJ Morrow, one of the greatest avant-garde balloon artists in the United States. “It’s almost like because it was around me constantly I didn’t even notice them.” They were, that is, like air.
Morrow, 29, lives in a small apartment in Houston, and makes his living as a wedding videographer. But his true passion, passed down from his parents, is balloons. He has transformed that passion into a career creating ephemeral inflatable sculptures unlike those seen at a typical child’s birthday.
One wall of Morrow’s living room/workshop is taken up by plastic boxes containing his hand pumps, tape measures and thousands and thousands of balloons, organized by color. During a visit in January, a rough draft of his most recent piece sat in the middle of the room: a life-size girl in a blue pinafore dress holding a snarling German shepherd by the leash. Every muscle group of the dog was taut, striated in aggression. Its teeth were bared and its yellowed eyes popped from its face. The girl’s face was a mask of panic.
The piece, titled “The Long Night Takes Hold,” “puts an image to the sense of general helplessness that I was feeling with the incoming administration,” said Morrow, his purple mohawk swept up with a clamshell hair claw.
On a large television screen was a photograph of a dead lamb, on its side, its muzzle bloodied. It will become the final element of the composition, its neck destined for the jaws of the dog.
As Morrow worked, the room filled with squeaks. To recreate the dead lamb, he inflated long white balloons. He began twisting, eyes glued to the screen, hands grasping and inflating balloons as smoothly as an archer draws an arrow from a quiver.
Slowly the form of a lamb’s jaw began to take shape. As Morrow twisted and pinched, and occasionally popped, a head grew.
Morrow is part of a very small cadre of balloon artists seeking to use the medium to express the profound. For Morrow, his ballooning journey began in Rio de Janeiro, where he was born, before moving to Taiwan and later Houston.
His parents were members of the Family of God (now called Family International), the cult founded by Morrow’s great-great-grandfather, David Berg, in 1968. They both worked with balloons. His mother, under the name Miss Sunshine, still does. His father developed a latex allergy and had to quit. (“That terrifies me,” Morrow said.)
At 16, Morrow began learning how to twist from his mother. After two weeks, he had learned her repertoire of swords, hats, dogs and teddy bears — “the standard canon of ’90s shapes,” he said. Hungry for more, he began experimenting with multiple balloons in a single piece. Soon he discovered the work of Matt Falloon and Rupert Appleyard, two balloon visionaries who developed systems to create large-scale sculptures. “Being an autodidact was a big part of the cult’s culture,” Morrow said, “so I really began to expand my balloon knowledge quickly.” (The Morrows left the cult in 2012; DJ now identifies as an atheist.)
In 2019, Morrow twisted a life-size sculpture of a sad clown, his first foray into inflatable pathos. It was inspired by his inner life.
“I was dealing with a lot of depression,” he said, “but, as an entertainer, I was constantly under pressure to put on a happy face.” For the first time, he unlocked balloon sculpture’s gravitas.
The piece wasn’t widely seen. But later that year, when he created a large reproduction of Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” and posted it to Reddit, it became the top post on the website. “The fact that it got to the number one really opened my eyes to the power of being artistically genuine,” he said. Soon Morrow was twisting balloons into large recreations of Francis Bacon’s disturbing “Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” with the pope replaced by Clarence Thomas.
Since then, Morrow has mounted large-scale exhibitions, including one at the Jung Center in Houston called “Out of the Strong Something Sweet,” which explored his childhood as a member of a cult and featured balloon sculptures of Samson wrestling with a lion.
“It represented to me all the good things that came out of my cult upbringing,” Morrow said. “It was me trying to salvage the good from the experience, as Samson did finding honey in the lion’s carcass.”
Those pieces, like all of his sculptures, began to decay as soon as they were finished. Preserving the balloons is out of the question. “It would be like embalming a corpse,” he said. (Morrow sells prints of photographs of his work on his website. Special editions run between $300 and $600.)
“It’s wonderfully artistically enriching,” he said as he worked on finessing the dead lamb, but he admitted that, “financially, it’s not the greatest.” Grabbing another balloon that he inflated, twisted and bent into a lamb’s mandible, he added, buoyantly, “It is beautiful in its absurdity though.”
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
Paramount Pictures
hide caption
toggle caption
Paramount Pictures
The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture
Abriana Vicioso is the host of the Flower Hour, which takes place monthly.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Each flower carries a personal history. For Abriana Vicioso, the calla lily was her parents’ wedding flower — a symbol of her mother’s beauty. “She had this big, beautiful white calla lily in her hair,” Vicioso says. “I love my parents. They’re the reason I’m here. I’ll never forget where I came from.”
The Flower Hour begins with Vicioso announcing, with a warm smile: “Today is about touching grass.” The florist-by-trade gestures behind her to hundreds of flowers contained in buckets — blue thistles, ivory anemones and calla lilies painted silver — all twisted and unfurling into the air. “Tonight is going to be so sweet and intimate,” Vicioso says, eyeing the beautiful chaos at her feet. A grin buds across her face.
Moments before the workshop, participants sit at candlelit tables exchanging horoscopes and comparing their favorite flowers. A mention of the illustrious bird-of-paradise flower elicits coos and awe from the women. Izamar Vazquez, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, reveals her fondness for roses, which make her feel connected to her Mexican roots.
Vicioso hosts her flower-themed wellness workshop near the iconic Original Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown L.A. In January, the first Flower Hour event sold out, prompting her to make it a monthly series. Vicioso describes the event as a “three-part journey” where participants are invited to drink herbal tea, smoke rose-petal-rolled cannabis joints and create a floral arrangement. “The guide is to connect with the medicine of flowers,” Vicioso says.
Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event’s offerings.
The event is hosted at the Art Club, a membership-based co-working space. “The Flower Hour is really beautiful. Everyone gets to explore their creativity while meeting new people,” says Lindsay Williams, the co-owner of the Art Club.
The idea for Flower Hour came to Vicioso during a conversation with her mother. “We joke all the time that flowers were destined to make their way into my life,” she says. She works as a florist and models on the side, even appearing in the pages of Vogue. Vicioso grew up in a Caribbean household, where flowers and offerings were part of daily life. “In my culture and religion, a lot of my family practices — an Afro-Caribbean religion — we build altars.”
Like many cultures, flowers carry sentimental value in her religion. “I’m Caribbean, so a lot of my family practices a Yoruba religion, which comes from Africa. In the Caribbean, it’s well known as Santería.”
-
Share via
After a difficult year and a breakup, Vicioso wanted to marry her love of flowers with community building. Because Vicioso uses cannabis medicinally, the workshop naturally includes a smoking component. “My family has smoked cannabis for a lot of reasons for a long time. It’s a really healing plant,” she explains.
In the workshop, even the cannabis gets the floral treatment. Vicioso presents her rose-petal-wrapped joints on a silver platter at each table. She rolled each by hand. “If you’ve never smoked a rose-petal-rolled joint, the difference with this is it’s going to have roses that have a slight tobacco effect,” she announces.
During the workshop, Vicioso stresses the importance of buying cannabis from local vendors. The cannabis provided was purchased from a Northern Californian vendor. The wellness workshop aims to reclaim the healing ritual of smoking cannabis. “This is a plant that has been commercialized,” Vicioso says. “There’s a lot of Black and Brown people who are in jail for this plant.”
The resulting workshop is what Vicioso describes as “an immersive wellness experience that is the intersection of wellness, creativity, community and an appreciation of flowers.” The workshop serves as a reminder to enjoy Earth’s innate beauty in the form of flowers — including cannabis. “It’s this gift that the universe gave us for free and that I have this deep connection with,” Vicioso says.
Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (top, letf). The workshop serves as a “third space” for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.
After enjoying lavender chamomile tea and smoking a joint, Vicioso introduces the flowers to the group before inviting them to pick their own. She emphasizes each flower’s personality traits, describing green dianthus as a “Dr. Seuss” plant. Then, there are calla lilies with their “main character moment.” It gets personal. “Start thinking of a flower in your life that you can discover,” she says. “If you’re feeling like you need inspiration, you can always remember that these flowers have stories.”
Vicioso infuses wisdom into her instruction on floral arrangements: There are no mistakes. Let the flowers tell you where they want to go, she urges. Intuition will be your guide — the wilder, the better.
“Hecho in Mexico” reads a sticker on a bunch of green stems. “Like me,” says Vazquez with a laugh. “They’re all doing their own thing. Like a family,” she says later, arranging stems.
The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements at the sold-out event.
Two participants — Vazquez and Rebeca Alvarado — are friends who run a floral design company together called Izza Rose. Like Vicioso, the friends have a connection to flowers through their Latin American culture. They met Vicioso in the floral industry and were overjoyed to discover her workshop.
“This is a great way to connect with other people,” says Vazquez.
Alvarado agrees, adding: “You’re getting to know people outside of going to bars. You can connect in different ways when there’s an activity.”
Vazquez uses flowers to stay connected to her Mexican heritage, adding that she prefers to support Mexican vendors. In recent months, the downtown L.A. flower market has struggled to recover from ongoing ICE raids. “Some are scared to come back,” says Vazquez.
Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.
Another participant, Barbara Rios, was attracted to the workshop for stress relief. “You can hang out with your friends, but it’s nice to do things with your hands,” she says. “I work a stressful job, and it’s nice to have that third space that we’re all craving.”
On this February night, the participants were predominantly women, save for one man. In the future, Vicioso hopes that more men learn to engage with flowers. “There’s a statistic about men receiving flowers for the first time at their funerals, and I think we have changed that,” she says.
To conclude the workshop, Vicioso encourages participants to build lasting friendships and incorporate flower arranging into their daily practice — even if it’s just with a small, inexpensive bouquet.
“Get some flowers together, go to the park, hang out with each other and hang out with me,” she says. Participants leave with flower arrangements in hand. In the darkness of the night air, it briefly looks as though the women carry silver calla lilies that are blooming from their palms.
An underwater view shows US’ Lilly King competing in a heat of the women’s 200m breaststroke swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Paris La Defense Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris, on July 31, 2024. (Photo by François-Xavier MARIT / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP via Getty Images)
François-Xavier Marit/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
François-Xavier Marit/Getty Images
This week’s show was recorded in Bloomington, Indiana with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Lilly King and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Josh Gondelman, and Faith Salie. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
Who’s Bill This Time
State of the Union is Hot; The Tribal Council Convenes Again; A Glow Up In the Doll Aisle
Panel Questions
The Toot Tracker
Bluff The Listener
Our panelists tell three stories about a travel hack in the news, only one of which is true.
Not My Job: Olympic Swimmer Lilly King answers our questions about Lil’ Kings
Olympic Swimmer Lilly King plays our game called, “Lilly King meet these Lil’ Kings” Three questions about short kings.
Panel Questions
Cleaning Out The Cabinet; Bedtime Stacking
Limericks
Bill Kurtis reads three news-related limericks: Getting Cozy With Cross Country Skiing; Pickleball’s New Competition; Bees Get Freaky
Lightning Fill In The Blank
All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else
Predictions
Our panelists predict, after American Girls, what’ll be the next toy to get an update.
Can fire-resistant homes be sexy? ‘You be the judge,’ says this Palisades architect
Shaikin: Clayton Kershaw’s ‘perfect’ ending has one final chapter in WBC
Unexpected birth brings hope to near-extinct Amazon tribe
Supreme Court blocks redrawing of New York congressional map, dealing a win for GOP
Oregon Dems block effort to alert ICE before illegal immigrant murderers are released
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Unexpected birth brings hope to near-extinct Amazon tribe
Supreme Court blocks redrawing of New York congressional map, dealing a win for GOP
Map: Earthquake Shakes Central California
Gas prices could jump as Middle East tensions threaten global oil supply
Pakistan calls troops, orders 3-day curfew as 24 killed in pro-Iran rallies
-
World5 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts5 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Denver, CO5 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Louisiana1 week agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Technology1 week agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Politics1 week agoOpenAI didn’t contact police despite employees flagging mass shooter’s concerning chatbot interactions: REPORT
-
Technology1 week agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making
-
News1 week agoWorld reacts as US top court limits Trump’s tariff powers