'Monsters of West Virginia' balloon sculptures on display as part of FestivALL

By Matthew Young, RealWV

For nearly 20 years, the epic balloon sculptures found around Charleston have been a highlight of FestivALL, the annual event which sees West Virginia’s Capital transformed into a city-wide work of art.

In all that time, one man has been the creative force behind those magnificent designs. From a balloon cabin at the coliseum, to a giant giraffe at the Town Center, Dizzy Doc has twisted thousands of colorful balloons in the service of his art. And this year, Doc has set loose the “Monsters of West Virginia,” with all of the Mountain State’s celebrated cryptids, at the Clay Center.

“My wife had said in passing last year,” Doc told RealWV Friday afternoon. “She said ‘Why don’t you do some monsters?’ And then the guy I was working with was like, ‘Sasquatch, I wanna do Sasquatch!’”

Junior Editor Nathan and Dizzy Doc consult on design techniques. Photo by Matthew Young, RealWV.

The design-process, Doc said, is something that both his wife, and mother-in-law, participate in. His mother-in-law will suggest, what Doc calls “some weird things,” while his wife serves as more of a logistical sounding-board.

“I come up with 500 things that I want to do,” Doc said. “Then I’ll run them by my wife, and she’ll say ‘Well that would take forever,’ or ‘Are you sure you can do that?’”

After whittling down Doc’s “500 things,” as well as his mother-in-law’s “weird things,” Doc brought his wife’s suggestion to life in the form of both Bigfoot, and the Flatwoods Monster. Impressive creations that each took a full day to construct, Bigfoot hides behind a pole awaiting passersby as they enter the Clay Center’s Science Zone, and the Flatwoods Monster hangs high above the all new Animation Station.

But the pièce de résistance, however, is the celebrated star of West Virginia’s original urban legend, the Mothman.

Standing more than 20 feet tall and boasting a wingspan to match, Doc’s Mothman consists of nearly 800 individual balloons, and took some 24 man-hours to construct. And from his perch high above the Clay Center’s lobby, the Mothman sits ready to greet visitors, or possibly fly away into the darkness of night.

“My wife said that if I was gonna do Bigfoot, I had to do the Mothman,” Doc shared. “At first, I wasn’t sure because I couldn’t see the Mothman in my head. But the more I thought about it over the next couple of months, I started to think it might work out alright. So I pitched it (to the organizers of FestivALL), and they loved it.”

“When I started designing it, it was still tricky because I couldn’t see it in my head,” Doc added. “When I got here, I started getting into it, but then I was a little afraid it was too big for the space.”

Despite his concerns over the Mothman’s massive size, once complete, the sculpture fit perfectly in the space allotted, thus completing the cryptid trifecta.

***Sasquatch, the Mothman, and the Flatwoods Monster loom large over the Clay Center lobby.***

“This is so much better than what was in my mind,” Doc said. “Even though I knew it would be awesome, this talks to me.”

Residing in Columbus, Ohio, Doc is, as he puts it, an “honorary West Virginian’ through marriage. And now mostly-retired from the world of balloon art, Doc makes occasional use of his more than 30-years of experience for events such as FestivALL.

“I’d been doing balloons as a private event entertainer since 1993,” Doc noted, before explaining that he began his career by working as a party clown. “I kinda feel in love with making people go ‘oooh, ahhh.’”

And make people go ‘oooh, ahhh’ he most certainly did. In the early 2000’s, before he was married but after leaving the clown costume behind, Doc devoted three years of his life to bringing his balloon art to excited spectators all across the country.

“I actually walked across the United States, and I took a bag of balloons,” Doc recalled. “I always had a bag of balloons with me, and my distributor at the time, out in Texas, he’d ask me where I was, and send general delivery to the post office in whatever town I was hitting next. I’d get there, pick up the balloons, and go to a restaurant.”

Doc would order whatever he could afford to eat with the money he had in his pocket. Sometimes his meal would be a sandwich, while other times it would be a simple glass of water.

“I’d start making balloons,” he said. “By the time I was done with the first or second balloon animal, everybody would be like, ‘What are you doing, man, what’s going on?’”

“Whatever establishment I walked into, I would end up walking out with a full stomach, a fistfull of money in my pocket, and a place to crash for the night,” Doc added. “Then that money would get me to the next town, and I’d start all over again. I lived fully hand-to-mouth off my balloons, and it was a phenomenal experience.”

After so many years of participation in FestivALL, Charleston has become an old, familiar friend to Doc. But on a windy day during his first year, that friendship had yet to be forged.

“I had pitched something big, and they (FestivALL organizers) were like, ‘Well, how about the West Virginia State Capitol?’” Doc explained. “So I was like, ‘okay.’”

“They wanted to put me outside between the library and parking garage,” Doc continued. “I kept telling them that it needs to be indoors, but they decided to go for it. They bought an expensive screen to put up for me to protect us from the sun, but what they weren’t considering – and I didn’t know – is that that’s a wind tunnel in there.”

Dizzy Doc’s design schematics. Photo by Matthew Young, RealWV. .

Doc and two helpers spent approximately 30 hours in their hotel twisting balloons to construct the center portion of the replica capitol building. After carrying it down to the street and placing it on the prepared platform beneath the tent, the team took a moment to eat their lunch.

“All of a sudden, the wind picked up that tube of balloons,” Doc said. “It was six feet in diameter and 12 feet long, and it just started floating between the buildings in downtown Charleston. It was spinning, and it was like a kite, going four and five stories up. It just kept going and going.”

After floating down Capitol Street and hanging a left on Quarrier, the sculpture eventually became lodged – unrecoverable – in a grouping of radio antennas.

“I chased it down several blocks,” Doc said. “Very deflated, I walked back to the spot we were working at. [One of the organizers] came out of nowhere with this look on her face – she must have gotten reports about a balloon sculpture flying through downtown.”

“She goes, ‘You need to rest a little bit, but if I find you an indoor space, would you have enough balloons and can you build it again?’”

18 years and many thousands of balloons later, Doc did indeed build it again.

“The Monsters of West Virginia” will be on display at the Clay Center for the entirety of FestivALL, from May 28 through June 1. For more information, including a full schedule of events, visit festivallcharleston.com.