“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
— Cesare Pavese
The Balloon That Knew Her Name, Los Gatos, CA, 2018
In a land where memories decayed more slowly than stones, a woman walked the last ridge of forgetting. She wore a velvet dress stitched with secrets, and in her gloved hand, she held a single black balloon—silent, round, and impossibly light.
Nobody remembered who she was, not even herself. The townspeople spoke in half-whispers of a ghost that wandered the high meadows each year when the wildflowers dimmed and the sky turned the color of old parchment. They said she was looking for someone. Others insisted she was already gone, but that the balloon, filled not with air, but memory, had tethered her back.
The wind never touched her. Even the tall trees, normally unruly in the valley breeze, stilled in her presence. The ground beneath her glowed faintly, like embers hidden beneath ashes, and shadows bloomed in her wake.
When she paused, the balloon tugged gently northward, as if it knew the way. She didn’t resist.
She simply followed.
And behind her, the world began to forget a little slower.
How the Image Tells the Story
This ethereal composite evokes a haunting stillness and quiet resistance. The figure, half-ghost, half-clown, stands at the edge of something ancient, perhaps time itself. Her back is turned, inviting viewers to project themselves into her shoes. The balloon glows subtly, the only sign of levity in an otherwise subdued, earthen palette. The layered textures and dreamlike haze conjure the atmosphere of a fading dream, a place you’re not sure you visited, or just imagined.
The dandelion-like seedheads scattered across the lower half suggest wishes, loss, and transience. The ghostly forest fading into the sky implies a place half-remembered, where nature and memory dissolve together. The vintage aesthetic suggests a time long gone, but not quite gone enough.
This is not just a figure in a field. This is a reckoning.
Artist Statement
"The Balloon That Knew Her Name" is an exploration of identity, impermanence, and the ghostly persistence of memory. I began with a mundane image from Lexington Reservoir, a place that feels both familiar and unknowable, like a recurring dream. By layering textures, fragments, and a lone figure clutching a balloon, I sought to create a visual poem, one that drifts between the real and the imagined. This work speaks to those quiet moments when we sense something slipping away, or someone calling us back.