For a good history of Mardi Gras: read here. Zulu parade: Here. And Mardi Gras Indians: Here and here.

(Mardi Gras Indians = feather envy)

Someone asked me yesterday what I was going to wear for my first Mardi Gras as a New Orleans resident. “Do I NEED a costume?” Yes!, they said. Ohhhhh crap. Another lesson learned quickly: This is the high holy holiday in New Orleans, and even if thou art just walking down the street, thou shalt style thyself accordingly.

I’m not the kind of girl to show up un-costumed to a costumed event. In fact, quite the opposite. A friend offered to loan me her costumes from last year … but that just didn’t … feel … right. For our kind, costumes must be hand-crafted, filled with the spirit, and wearable post-event — not store-bought, forgotten about, and donated to the community center along with the bridesmaid’s dress and the fondue set. My threads won’t be anything fancy — but they’ll be mine. Even at this late date, I’ll get it done.

Preparation for the fete is the spell you cast; costume, the pre-battle warpaint. As I make black-and-gold streamers for the Saints Superbowl game-day party at the Village, I wish on the Saints to win. As I cobble together the effluvia found during my Year One in NOLA, in hopes of crafting a costume that doesn’t suck … my fabric, my spirit, my memories, my treasures groundscored and laid aside for occasions just such as this, and for that one other burning dude in August … I reflect and ponder and plan for the future. I’m positive many folks in New Orleans — especially the Mardi Gras Indians — are doing the same.

Costume! Readyyyyy.... GO

It’s meditative to sew, to make garlands and paint banners and do whatever else this homemade-hoedown type of party requires. You ready for the barn-raising. You gather scrap fabric from friends and thrift stores, and busily make sketches and plans. You lay out materials and notions, cuddle with the borrowed Itunes collection of a musically-discerning friend, turn up the volume, and sail away to inner space.

In summary, the report from New Orleans is that costume-sewing is SERIOUSLY taking place in these days leading up to Fat Tuesday. It is prayer. It marks the end of something, and the beginning of the new. And on Mardi Gras, all that energy bottled up from weeks of Saintsmania and cutting/sewing/gluing/painting things onto floats/costumes/decorations … all that momentum, worry, focus, and anticipation … will become a group hallelujah.

WHO DAT whatnotery for da superbowl party @da Village - GO SAINTS

FIGMENT submissions are open for the pavilion, minigolf, and sculpture garden!
Call for Art!

They also need members of the team, check it out!

video: Carol Binkowski

You can listen to his podcast here.  (Note: it contains language that might offend some listeners.)

Invites you to attend 

Eat Your heART Out

• $75 adult ticket for meal only with cash bar (no reserved seating)
• $25 Children between 5 and 11 years old
• Kids under 5 free!
• Benefactor tickets $150 (includes reserved seating in your name and bottomless mimosas/marys served at your bed)
• Regular tickets $100 (includes brunch buffet and bottomless mimosas/marys at the bar; no reserved seating-beds seating first come first serve.

BUY YOUR TICKET NOW

artwork: jennybird

Sanlun Yishu in front of the Great Wall of China

Have you checked out the Black Rock Arts Foundation’s BLOG recently?  It is filled with art from our grantees and events we would love to share with you.  Just in the last 10 days we have blogged about mobile interactive art in China, a Burning Man and Black Rock Arts Foundation artist, Dan Das Mann, Cardboardia in Russia, and a fabulous Valentine’s Day event in San Francisco we would love to attend with you.

We keep you up to date on our Grants to Artists, Civic Arts and ScrapEden programs.

Did I hear you say you aren’t familiar with the Black Rock Arts Foundation? 

“The mission of the Black Rock Arts Foundation is to support and promote community-based interactive art and civic participation. For our purposes, interactive art means art that generates social participation. The process whereby this art is created, the means by which it is displayed and the character of the work itself should inspire immediate actions that connect people to one another in a larger communal context.”

So come on over and check us out!

Cardboardia exhibit in a museum in Russia

Long time Burning Man artist, Dan Das Mann is featured in the East Bay Express, check it out, Das Mann of Steel recently.

In addition to being Burning Man artists, Dan and Karen Cusolito’s Passage was part of Black Rock Arts Foundation’s Civic Art Program, which was installed at  Pier 14 as the first piece of temporary art in that space.

Congratulations Dan, it is always great to see art featured in the news!

Be sure and read Dan’s response to the article in the comments section, in which he credits his co-sculptor Karen Cusolito.

photo: Scott Beale\Laughing Squid Laughing Squid

Thurs Jan 21st
Swan River Yoga Downtown
2130 Chartres St, in the Marigny
8:30-10:00

Debt-based currencies controlled by closed syndicates of private banks are not the only way that humans can make an economy. Many tribal cultures have organized themselves around an entirely different way of exchanging value: The gift. Where our financial system expertly moves resources from the many to the few, gift-based cultures like to share what they have – as writer Lewis Hyde noted, “The gift moves toward the empty place.” At a time when billions are enslaved by passionless work while inequity reaches new historic heights, we are seeing a postmodern revival of sharing and gifting, with examples ranging from the open source movement to the annual Burning Man festival.

In this Spore, we explore the abstract theory and practical dynamics of gifting, the challenges of implementing this innovative, yet archaic, way of getting what you want and wanting what you get. We invite fellow Evolvers to bring their precious gifts – whether it be witticisms or wood-carved totems to the Spore and spread them around. Local Spores can screen “Burn on the Bayou,” a mini-documentary chronicling Burners without Borders gifting efforts during seven months of relief work in the Katrina-battered Gulf Coast towns of Biloxi and Pearlington, MS. Since that time, BWB has grown into an international, grassroots organization whose projects are based on the principle of gifting.

We will have Summer Burkes as a presenter. She is a longtime worker for the Burning Man festival outside Reno, Nevada, moved to New Orleans on April Fool’s Day of last year. Anyone who toils in the hot sun for three months at a time — staying in a van / tent / trailer in a landscape so harsh it harbors no living things — to help build and strike a temporary city of 60,000 people … learns a peculiar skill set, to say the least. Inspired by her crowd’s “Do Stuff” philosophy, and interested in seeing how the things she learned at That Place In The Desert could translate into the real world, Summer chose to migrate back home to the South to see what was up in the Lower Ninth Ward and how she could help. Currently, she has started working with Burners Without Borders and the Lower Ninth Ward Village to initiate a program called “Where’s Your Neighbor?”… and they need volunteers!

More info here. Be there or be L-7.

Our lovely and charming Grant Committee has sent us the following to relay to would-be submitters of grant proposals, and we thought it only right to pass it on to you.  They say:

Hear ye! Hear ye! The Burning Man grant committee is now accepting applications for the 2010 grant season. In an effort to make the process easier, we’ve created a new format — an editable PDF. It asks all the same questions and requires the same information as we have always wanted, but now in a simple form. You can learn more and access the new PDF here. This new format is the new, mandatory format for applying for a grant. The deadline for grant application si 11:59 pm February 1st. This is a hard deadline — no late submissions will be considered. You can read more about it here.

Also as part of this year’s grant season, Burning Man is soliciting applications for the plazas — the 3:00, 4:30, 7:30 and 9:00. We’ve set aside some funds from our grant budget to cover these locations. It’s a unique opportunity to create something interactive, something thought-provoking, and something fun in the neighborhoods of Black Rock City. There have been amazing pieces in the plazas from such award-winning artists as David Best and Charlie Smith, and the pieces have been as thought-provoking and whimsical as Black Rock City has ever seen … like Bruce Bender’s “Ketchup!” for instance.

Ketchup by Bruce Bender

In addition, we are asking for grant applications for the Cafe portal. The Cafe ‘Front Portal’ Art is a specific art installation positioned just in front of the entry to the Café as it faces The Man. Though named the Front Portal, it is NOT necessary that this Art be a portal, arch, gateway or similar shape. See below for images of some Portal pieces from previous years. This is the first year we are including the process for selecting the Café Front Portal Art in the larger grant cycle – in the past these artists were hand-picked by Café leadership by virtue of their familiarity with the Café and prior playa works. Since 2000 (when David Best created the first Front Portal) the art location has evolved  away from the structure itself, with large-scale Art proudly marking the front entrance to the Center Camp Café.   This is notto be confused with the Keyhole location, the Front Portal is quite close to the Café structure. The Cafe portal position is a place of honor in front of the Cafe. Here are some images of previous Café Front Portal Art pieces:

2008: The Curmudgeon by Michael Taluc

2007: Bike Rack (aka Bike Arch) by Mark Grieve and Ilana Spector

2006: Leaping Giants by Dan DasMann and Karen Cusolito

2005: The Ancestors by Marlene Kryza

2004: The Sirens by Rosanna Scimeca

2003: Cafe Portal by Michael Christian

Illuminated Arch by Finley Fryer

Don’t forget our grant deadline is February 1st. We look forward receiving your grant applications!!

Exploratorium After Dark

There are over seventeen Art and science installations demonstrating a myriad of optical and tactile phenomena, including Mark Lottor’s Cubatron that graced Black Rock City this past year. If you’ve seen the Cubatron from across the playa and attempted to place it somewhere within your field of vision as you moved towards it, you understand how this optical resolution thing can work.

Melissa Alexander who organizes “After Dark” regularly participates in Burning Man and told me that the Exploratorium has a history of showing works by local artists of all kinds and there are quite a few pieces they’ve shown that were first seen on playa. The artists’ work from Burning Man tends to resonate with the kinds of work the Exploratorium has supported historically. There are some interesting parallels between the Exploratorium and Burning Man. At one time the Exploratorium was one of the few places in San Francisco that supported the kinds of artists who tend to work interactively and with technology, and the people interested in the Art and exhibits featured there are typically participants who are from a diverse cross section of the population.

The event is tomorrow so get there early to get in. The exhibits typically run from 6:30 to 9:30 and this is a one day event. The Exploratorium is at the Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon Street San Francisco.

Resolution
Thursday, January 7, 2010
6:00–10:00 p.m.
Bar opens at 6:00 p.m.
http://exploratorium.edu/afterdark/

Sharpen your senses at Exploratorium After Dark.

From sharpness to saltiness, distinguishable differences are the basis of perception. Discover the role resolution plays in how we see, hear, taste, and feel, and how our minds synthesize sensations into an understanding of the world.

Play with perception through special exhibits, build a pinhole camera, or behold your tiny surroundings in the Tiltshift-o-scope. Experiment with illusions, monkey with magnification, and size up your taste buds with a supertaster test. Explore the exquisite optics of Yumito Awano’s drinking straw sculptures and see days slip by in Ken Murphy’s A History of the Sky. Throughout the evening, thousands of LEDs will light up Mark Lottor’s Cubatron with spectacularly dynamic patterns.

for more information go to http://exploratorium.edu/afterdark/

Hope to see you there!