Interest ballooning in Kelly’s unique sculptures

AIR OF IMPORTANCE: Artist Janice Lee Kelly is a sculptor who works in the medium of balloons. “Most people look at balloons and see children’s parties and twisty balloon animals, but I [see] building blocks for larger sculptures,” she said. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
AIR OF IMPORTANCE: Artist Janice Lee Kelly is a sculptor who works in the medium of balloons. “Most people look at balloons and see children’s parties and twisty balloon animals, but I [see] building blocks for larger sculptures,” she said. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

When people ask her about her work, Janice Lee Kelly usually tells them, “I’m in the event-transformation business.” That’s because what she designs and produces are floating sculptures – you could call them aerial installations – meant to create an environment.
Her creations range from elegant and classic for a garden wedding to whimsical, vibrant and contemporary, such as 15 sculptures for “The Art of Place Making” conference at the Omni Hotel in Providence in November.
While her medium is balloons, these are top-of-the-line, 100 percent natural, latex balloons made from the sap of rubber trees in African villages, shipped to a factory in Texas that Kelly has visited to see the production process firsthand. The balloons biodegrade at the rate of a leaf, usually even faster than a leaf, which Kelly knows because she has tested the process in her garden.
“Most people look at balloons and see children’s parties and twisty balloon animals, but I look at them and see color pixels and shapes that are building blocks for larger sculptures,” said Kelly.
She often doesn’t even use the word “balloon” when talking with potential clients, because of common assumptions about the more party-related – and less artistically sophisticated and professional – uses of balloons.
“The biggest challenge I had for a long time was just telling people I worked with balloons,” said Kelly, who came from Kentucky to Rhode Island School of Design, where she got a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1975.
After college, she returned to Kentucky, got her architectural license, and worked in architecture for many years, including serving as the architect for Louisville’s Landmarks Commission.
She began to miss the East Coast and easy access to the urban centers of New York and Boston, so she headed back to Rhode Island. In 1993, she opened a design-oriented gift shop in Newport called Kelly + Gillis: Signs of Intelligent Life, with a related business-to-business and e-commerce segment.
She had chosen Newport as her new home – or rather, she thinks it chose her.
“I was looking for an urban environment where I could walk to the movies or to get a cup of coffee. I was raising a small child at the time,” said Kelly. “Newport grabbed me by the ankles and said, ‘Don’t leave me.’ It has the feeling of a beautiful, urban place and it’s by the sea with all that natural beauty of the seacoast.”
The shop opened on America’s Cup Avenue and eventually moved to Bellevue Avenue, across from the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum. She closed the shop in 2007. She wanted to be closer to Providence and found a cottage on a salt marsh in Barrington.
While working with balloons in her retail store, Kelly had begun to explore their artistic possibilities. She had intended to return to work in architecture, but instead began applying her architectural skills to her floating balloon structures.
“Every time I work on a project, I realize that if I hadn’t been an architect, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing,” said Kelly about skills that provide a solid foundation in materials and structures. “It gave me grasp of how to handle special problems with my aerial installations,” she said. “Some of them are filled with helium and fly like kites on monofilaments. Sometimes they’re suspended on armatures.”
As she expanded the possibilities of her floating creations, they have ranged from a 20-foot-in-diameter, red balloon “Ring of Fire” for the Big Apple Circus at Lincoln Center, to a caterpillar-like balloon creation in the garden at a Jamestown housewarming to gravity-defying kinetic sculptures hovering over the salt marsh near her home. As interest in her work grew, she began to explore the wider business opportunities.
“It began to dawn on me that these floating sculptures are really transferrable to creating event environments,” said Kelly. “The event pieces are conceived with the client, specifically for the event. It’s done with the space in mind, as opposed to an art installation.”
Business grew to include fundraising events for nonprofits, as well as weddings, bar mitzvahs and other special events.
More large events came her way, such as the Hasbro Children’s Hospital Play-Doh Ball at the R.I. Convention Center in March 2013, which was attended by 800 people and raised more than $1 million. Kelly created 54 sculptures with the full spectrum of colors that appeared to be Play-Doh exploding out of its labeled containers. Kelly’s event transformation included 250 balloon hats, which guests donned as the band took the stage.
Kelly’s clients keep the creations, if they choose to, or she trucks them back to her studio in Warren, sometimes repurposing them for other pieces of art.
Interest in Kelly’s colorful, buoyant and unique creations has recently taken off in the online ethers, after an article on her work appeared in the fall 2013 issue of the RISD XYZ alumni magazine. That article attracted the attention of art blogs, including Gessato, Juxtapoz, vi.sualize, L’Acte Gratuit and Ygen.
“That RISD magazine article and the blogs seem to have set off a tidal wave,” she said with delight. •

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