For Luciano Britto Gomes, balloons are a kind of canvas that he likes to display under the open sky in front of everyone's eyes.

There are passions that can't be stopped. Such is the case with Luciano's passion for the handmade construction of São João balloons, made from tissue paper and bamboo. Born in Rio de Janeiro, this master balloon maker can't pinpoint the moment when he became enchanted by the colourful balloons that soar through the sky, but since he was a child, he says, ‘I used to cut and glue paper to help my brothers and sisters’. ‘I've been passionate about balloons since I was born. My father used to make balloons and so did my brothers. In Brazil, it was customary to launch balloons, especially between May and June, in anticipation of the June festivities,’ he says. When he was 12, Luciano told his father that he wanted to make balloons his life. ‘I said I wanted to be a balloonist and my father thought it was absurd; I was a bit aimless, not knowing which way to go.’ He ended up graduating in Physical Education and went on to teach, ‘but his passion was always the balloon’, and he never stopped building them.

In February 1998, a law was published in Brazil criminalising ‘the manufacture, sale, transport and launching of balloons’ due to the risk of fire, which shattered Luciano's dreams. But balloon launching ‘is very deep-rooted’ in Brazilian culture, ‘and passion is a complicated thing; you can't get rid of it that easily,’ he confesses with a childish smile. So he continued building and launching balloons until the birth of his son Guilherme in 2008. From then on, she began to think of ways to keep her passion alive without breaking the law. She then decided to build inflatable balloons, using fans, to be displayed in public places ‘and without any great pretence of making a [financial] return.’ ‘I just wanted to carry on doing my art,’ she says.

The Brazilian artist had been invited by Maus Hábitos to do the Pneumática exhibition, whose inflatable sculptures were inspired by paper balloons and their importance in the collective memory of Portuguese and Brazilians, as part of the São João Baloeiro project, promoted in partnership with Porto City Council, which also included workshops and São João balloon releases.

This project was to be repeated in 2015 and 2016, sparking Luciano's desire to move to this side of the Atlantic. Also in 2017, the project was due to take place, ‘but two days before it was interrupted’ due to the bans imposed by the government following the great fires of Pedrógão Grande. It was precisely that year that Luciano had moved to Porto with his family. The cancellation of the project shook him, but he didn't want to go back and threw himself into every job he could to make ends meet. Seven years later, he reconciles his passion for baloeira art with a job at Joaquim Pombal's ceramics studio in Leça do Balio. ‘I work 10 months a year and leave two months for São João,’ he says. At this point, he has no problem with ‘big orders’.

With different shapes, patterns, designs and colours, dozens of balloons leave Master Luciano's hands every year. Many of them are not destined for the skies; they are displayed in public spaces. They are balloons of considerable size, six metres high, and correspond to ‘a whole week's work’.

99 lit balloons

While the smallest hot air balloons can fly up to 500 metres in the air, large balloons can fly up to 10,000 metres. But not all of them are destined for the sky: in the case of balloons for exhibitions, Luciano first uses 30-gram white paper, ‘a more resistant paper’, and then, on silk paper, he adds decoration using the cut and paste technique.

The biggest balloon he ‘helped build’ - he stresses that it was a collective effort - was 24 metres high. In Rio de Janeiro, he was used to building balloons ‘with 20 or 30 other people’. ‘It's many months of work, but it's months of socialising.’ Here, his work is more solitary. ‘It's a very long process, and I have to develop production methods to be fast because it's very difficult on my own,’ he admits.

This master balloonist has also been running hot air balloon construction workshops, in partnership with various organisations, to pass on the knowledge and keep the tradition alive, as well as paper toy workshops, such as those held as part of the Children's Festival in the Palácio Gardens (check out the programme on the Ágora - Cultura e Desporto do Porto website).

Asked if he finds it difficult to dispose of the balloons he builds, Luciano assures us that he doesn't because ‘they were made to fly’. ‘That's the balloon's destiny: to fly. When it flies, the mission is complete,’ he concludes.