Mary Holmes (1910-2002) was a great friend and teacher to the Balloon Hat project. In fact, when the idea first came up to go around the world and make hats for people, Mary was the first (and only) person to genuinely encourage us. Later on, Addi and Mary sat down and did 10 hours of interviews about the significance of the headdress throughout human history, which taught Addi more about his job as a balloon hat maker than anything else.

Mary was an art historian at UCLA and later at UC Santa Cruz, where she taught from the creation of the school in 1965 until her retirement. Mary was also a painter of extraordinary large oil paintings depicting magical images of mythological subjects.

When we finished making our book, The Inflatable Crown, we got the idea of making a book about Mary’s ideas and paintings. Addi and Mary sat down and did 80 hours of interviews; Charlie shot photos of her paintings and of the 60-acre farm that she lived on in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

In order to maintain the integrity of the project, we created our own press, Very Press, and published this full-color photo book ourselves. We are very pleased that the book has turned out to be so beautiful and faithful to Mary’s profound ideas and work.

To check out the book and meet an incredible person, please visit www.maryholmesbook.com.