When a Balloon Maker Becomes an Environmental Artist

Armed with 500 feet of inflatable scarlet tubing and a camera, Doron Gazit is drawing attention to environmental disasters around the world. In ecosystems where human activity has crossed the line between the sustainable use of resources and outright exploitation, the Los Angeles–based artist transforms those metaphorical turning points into literal red lines.

Inflatables have been Gazit’s medium of choice for years. While a young art student at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, he made a living by working as a balloon twister. He began to view the long, skinny balloons as three-dimensional lines he could draw with on a larger scale. Gazit would go on to patent the design for Fly Guys—those undulating tube figures that dance outside car dealerships—after working with a team that introduced them at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Nowadays, Gazit says, “Nature is my canvas.” His inflatable-based works include Sculpting the Wind, in which inflatable sleeves reveal the movement of the wind; “Hi-Lights,” a series of playful, illuminated decorative pieces; and, of course, the Red Line Project. Gazit has placed his supersize red lines at the dwindling Dead Sea, melting icebergs in Alaska, California’s drought-ravaged San Joaquin Valley, the shrinking Salton Sea, and other imperiled places. When Gazit leaves, the tubing goes with him, leaving no trace on the landscape.

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