I need you to understand something. When someone finds out I twist balloons and they say “oh like balloon animals?” with that little smile — that specific smile, the one that says how cute, the grown man makes balloon doggies — I have to physically restrain myself from pulling out my phone and showing them what balloon artists are doing right now. In 2026. With latex and air and nothing else.

Because here’s the thing. The balloon dog is not the pinnacle of balloon art. The balloon dog is where you start. The balloon dog is “Hello World” for people who twist. It is the first rung of a ladder that goes so much higher than anyone outside this weird little world realizes, and I am tired of people thinking the ladder is one rung tall.

I started twisting balloons in the 90s. I learned from books — actual physical books, because the internet was not yet in the business of teaching you how to make a poodle out of a 260. The big innovation at that time was weaving. Someone figured out that if you wove balloons together in a lattice pattern, you could build large structures. Not just a hat. Not just a sword for the kid who won’t stop asking for a sword. I’m talking full costumes. Dresses. Suits of armor. Things that made you stop and go “wait, that’s balloons?”

It blew my mind. Weaving was a paradigm shift in what was possible with the medium, and I say “medium” deliberately because that is exactly what it is. Latex is a medium. Air is a medium. The combination of the two is a sculptural medium that happens to be impermanent, and if impermanence disqualifies something from being art then I have some bad news about sand mandalas and ice sculptures and literally all of performance art.

Sarah was the first person who told me to treat it that way. This was over twenty years ago, before balloon art had its own competition circuit, before Instagram existed to showcase it. She watched me twist and said something to the effect of “you know that’s art, right?” And I remember thinking she was being generous. She wasn’t. She was just right before everyone else.

Because since those early weaving days, the innovation hasn’t stopped. It’s accelerated. People are building things now that would’ve been inconceivable when I was learning a basic bear from a diagram in a spiral-bound book. Full-scale sculptures with shading and dimension and texture. Animals that look like they could walk off the table. Faces with actual expressions. Artists are developing new techniques for creating curves and shapes that the geometry of a balloon was never supposed to allow, and they’re doing it anyway, because artists don’t care what a medium is “supposed” to do.

I don’t twist as much as I used to. Life, hands, the whole deal. But I keep my eye on the balloon world because it’s my world, even from the sidelines, and every time I see what someone’s built with nothing but balloons and a pump I feel two things simultaneously: awe at how far the art has come, and a deep, simmering annoyance that most people will never see it because they stopped paying attention after the dog.

So the next time someone makes you a balloon animal, maybe — and I’m just throwing this out there — don’t pat them on the head about it. You might be looking at someone who can build a life-size dragon out of air. They just made you a dog because you asked for a dog.

Respect the medium. It’s earned it.