A twisted worldview
Some people try to change the world with protest marches or letter-writing campaigns, others with folk songs or radical art.
Balloon hats seemed a viable option for Addi Somekh and Charlie Eckert.
The Balloon Hat Project -- with Somekh twisting and Eckert photographing -- has taken the two men around the globe. In the process, they’ve published three calendars, been captured in a documentary film and elevated balloon art from preschool party trick to culturally potent art form.
Somekh, who lives in L.A. and will teach a class this Saturday at the kids activity center Creative Space, made his first inflatable headwear more than a decade ago while working part time as a twister in a San Francisco restaurant. “I was a frustrated musician and I had just had my heart broken and I was working this crappy job,” remembers Somekh, “and all I would do is sit in my room all night crying and making balloon animals.” From these inauspicious beginnings, an obsession blossomed.
Somekh began teaching classes. He hired himself out for parties. He worked corporate events, where his duty was to loosen up tight upper management. He now makes a living off his balloon work. “Something just happens when you put a balloon hat on people,” he explains. “This kind of transformation occurs.”
By 1995, when he met Eckert in New York, he was well on his way to being a master twister. The photographer was immediately impressed. “He made hats that seemed to be extensions of the wearer’s personality,” Eckert says.
Just before Halloween that year, Somekh crafted hats as impromptu costumes for Eckert and some other friends. “We were about 10 feet out of Addi’s door when the first of many people approached us,” Eckert remembers. “From the subway riders to the people at the costume parties, and even the taxi drivers, everyone was raving about the hats. I’ve lived my whole life in New York City and never before had I seen random strangers react this way.”
The next morning, Eckert woke up on Somekh’s floor, hung over but somehow enlightened. Even inspired.
“I said to Addi, ‘It would be amazing to go around the world, make people hats, photograph them and then put together a project that shows how similar people around the world are.’ ”
And thus, the Balloon Hat Project.
Over the last three years, Somekh and Eckert have turned that early morning epiphany into reality, traveling to 34 countries and gently placing balloon hats upon the heads of everyone from Hindu holy men to Amazonian Indians to Bosnian war veterans.
Filmmaker Andy Vermouth bumped into Somekh in a currency exchange line in Ghana. He expected Somekh was an aid worker or doctor. When Somekh explained his balloon hat mission, Vermouth says, “At that point, I wished them luck and tried to get away from them as quickly as I could!”
Three days later, however, Vermouth found himself traveling with Somekh and Eckert to a small coastal village, where he first saw Somekh at work. “I was hooked on the raw joy of the project and decided to make some kind of documentary about it,” he says. “I’ve basically been broke ever since.”
It’s not difficult to understand Vermouth’s awe. Somekh’s hats are astounding creations. They defy expectation and gravity, moving beyond the clownish, vaguely humiliating balloon hats of a thousand county fairs, and offering up something altogether beautiful. Somekh is capable of twisting grandiose Viking helmets, delicate princess tiaras and regal crowns that tower above their wearers’ heads and sway gracefully in the wind. These shimmering chapeaus are somehow hilarious yet flattering, as if by throwing away self-consciousness one actually gains a new kind of dignity.
“The most inspiring moment for me was a 32-year-old cafe owner in old Sarajevo, who sat with a balloon hat on his head, drinking strong coffee with us, telling how he’d deserted the army when, as he put it, his ‘psycholog went wrong,’ ” Vermouth recalls.
“His own personal duty during the war, he discovered, was not to carry a gun but to open up the cafe every morning, and create the feeling of a normal city life with his customers, even as the bombs dropped all around them.... He said his balloon hat reminded him of that duty we all have to share joy, especially in the worst of circumstances.”
And, in the end, that was the mission of the Balloon Hat Project -- to get at the common humanity of joy. It’s hard not to laugh with balloons on your head.
The project’s results have been printed in three calendars, and Eckert and Somekh hope to publish a book as well. Vermouth has finished his documentary, too, and is submitting it to film festivals.
“A balloon hat may seem a little silly, but somehow, once people have them on, they don’t care anymore. They change,” Somekh says. “They transform, for that small moment at least, into a much happier person.”
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Balloon Hats
Class and slide show
Who: Addi Somekh
Where: Creative Space, 6325 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A.
When: Saturday, noon and 2 p.m. Preregistration required.
Cost: $15 includes book, pump and balloons. For ages 7 and up.
Contact: (323) 462-4600
Also: Slide show today, 8 p.m., Echo Park Film Center, 1200 N. Alvarado St., (213) 484-8846. For private lessons and other Balloon Hat Project information, see www.balloonhat.com.
