The Temple in progress

Despite four days of nightly white outs, including the mother of all sandstorms and 12 hour delays on I-80 over the pass, being surrounded by hundreds of wild fires burning, and rumors of a fuel line break that would make gas impossible to procur, somehow most of the art for this year is either complete or almost there. This is indeed a fertile year for art as it springs up seemingly everywhere on the playa.

A few of the larger pieces are still putting on finishing touches. The Temple of Juno is built and there are only cherry pickers affixing the intricate decorations to the outer walls as they finish the altars inside the courtyard and Burn Wall Street has all their buildings up and at night you can see the neon signs.

Zonotopia and the Two Trees

Now that the gates are open, playa citizens wander along in fresh packs wearing clothes that have yet to be brushed with the color of playa. They ride through the art on blinking bikes as mutant vehicles boom or blast disco and the city now hums with the sound of construction as themecamps spring up along the Esplanade, and points beyond are filling in. Scaffolding rises, Pink furry places with fluffy couches and Shipwreck Tiki Lounges are close to being open for camaraderie. The graceful French Quarter, BaalMart, Spankys and large scale sound camps of pyramids and enormous domes lit from inside at night out at the ends of the city are appearing with wild abandon in this frontier town.

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Completing the Pistil

48 hours after the Otic Oasis crew entered the Man Base to build the Pistil, the last of a tirad of finials atop the piece were put into place. The Pistil is composed of Gregg Fleishman’s interlocking wooden pieces and it spans most of the middle of the Man Pavilion, climbing up to just below where the Man stands above over the open oculus. It’s an elegant sculpture that swirls around in a series of modules connected by stairways with a flowing symmetry suggesting both a honeycomb and very much this year’s theme of Fertility.

Scott and Gregg with a node

The crew climbed all over the sculpture working, and as the last pistil top was lowered, there were many deft fingers in there making adjustments, with bodies intertwined, twisting and raising the graceful piece into place. When the node slid down to a stop there was applause. Then one by one, curved vertical pieces were inserted and pins placed, then each crew member took a turn knocking the pins into place with their mallets. It was all very deliberate and with the absence of power tools, it seemed very ritualistic and beautiful to behold. Read more »

Flux Foundation’s Zoa, photo by portaplaya

The ARTery is in full swing, with projects beginning to pour in by the truckload. Where once was open playa and the original four projects with their encampments, now a cornucopia of projects grows every day. Bands of dusty artists arrive in caravans following long trucks packed with wood and steel and those artists are beginning to match the population of those building Black Rock City. Flux is here setting up Zoa, the EGO project, Reno Star Cosmic Thistle and Anubis among other pieces are all placed and building, rising up like tiny desert tribes, settled in and circling whatever tall idol they’re erecting.

Zoa, photo by portaplaya

Out at Zoa Flux heavy equipment (HEAT) was helping to put together the three steel structures that are the underlying “sculptural array” for the project. They’re named Billy, Etta and Nina and large star shaped wooden pieces that will form part of their wooden Seapod exoskeletons lay off to the side awaiting numerous adjustments, placements, riggings and gas lines installations before being fitted to the outsides. Flux is a whirr of energy with crews working all over and last night and tonight they’re testing flame effects. Jess Hobbs was out there and she had a button her hat that read “Chaos is my Bitch” and Masha showed us the orb on Etta that she’d cut from a huge pipe then shaped and sculpted. Zoa is located past the Man, before the Temple out toward 2:00 and will be burning Wednesday night at 9:00.

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What follows is a short photo essay of last night’s Early Burn. These photos and captions are from Todd “portaplaya” Gardiner, who will be working with some of the bloggers here during the event this year.

portaplaya writes

The Early Burn is a celebration of the accomplishments of the staff and volunteers. Many of the people out this early have been building the event for more than two weeks without a day off. and this short event allows each team to make an expression of their specific contribution and provides an evening of R&R before going into the last week before the event opens.

Small core teams of artists were formed by various larger groups. The projects are rather competitive and the results range from crass to classy. The next few photos show what these builders created in two day’s time, often from scrap materials.

 

an Angel from EGO

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Bucky placing art

I’ve got my feet in several worlds this year on playa, working for the ARTery, documenting art projects to share with you all, and I’m doing some placement with the Artist Support Services (ASS) folks and I’m pretty much there to do whatever else they want me to. I’m also helping out with some Tech stuff since in my year round job I work on this here web site about the whole Burning Man thing. My ARTery mentor is Awesome Sauce, and yesterday, under her steady tutelage,  I had the pleasure of placing my first art project EVER, Otic Oasis.

My most awesome mentor, Awesome Sauce

Basically the ARTery places art once you hit the playa with your project. You roll into the ARTery and register, and then one of our team will set a time to take you out on the playa with what is called a “floofy” which sounds like “flew fee” with the plural being “floofies”. The ARTery has a rigid lexicon to describe what they do.

There are two main reasons for registering your ART. First and most obvious is to have a map of where the projects are, so people searching for them can find them, and secondly to be able to list projects on the MOOP map to make sure we all Leave No Trace.

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A few weeks ago Charlie Smith, who is based in Atlanta, came to California to do a little fundraising, have a workshop to teach a little welding and other skills while building community and working on his 2012 Burning Man Honorarium Installation,“Timing is Everything – The 24×7 Time-Star”. We stopped by to take a few photos since we have know Charlie for years, and MonkeyBoy got to weld a little and I sat down and did a little filing.

We had a great time. Charlie’s cousin, Mary Gilbert, lives in San Francisco and helped put the weekend together. Read more »

The Pier trucked in

With less than two weeks before the event starts, some of the largest art is here already setting up. There’s four so far, David Best’s Temple beyond Man Base, Otto Von Danger’s Burn Wall Street around 9:00 off from the Man, the Man Base and the Pier 2 who showed up Tuesday night and are placed at 4:30 and Esplanade.

I’m following the art this year on playa and one thing I really like about Burning Man artists is that they’re building not only huge things to enthrall you participants, both with physical interaction, and some will burn the whole thing eventually, but they do it in the middle of this harsh desert as just an extra, “Oh and if that wasn’t enough”.

Pier 2 survey

Matt Schultz and Paul of the Pier rolled into our newly shaded ARTery from the Salvagery in Reno. Some of their wood came along with the Burn Wall Street crew when they came in over the weekend . If you missed the Pier last year, it was a magical stroll along an actual pier above our dry lake bed, complete with the ambiance sounds of water below, dinghies, a Master Bait and Tackle shop and people fishing at the end. It was pretty fun hanging out with others on the pier. This year I’m told by Orlin and Fish that a Spanish Galleon has crashed into the end of the pier and it will feature a Captain’s Room, a main room, crew quarters with hammocks and a stowage area. Also this year you’ll want to have a fishing license and have it stamped if you’re going to fish.

The Pier structure built

They’d set up camp the night before (in one of the four storms we’ve had in the last 4 days), surveyed the project footprint and were busily unloading trucks full of props as wood was being moved over from Burn Wall Street’s Camp. We met with them when they went over some engineering aspects of the piece yesterday afternoon and they were intent of finishing the Pier part of their project by midnight last night. If the crew could finish by midnight last night, they would get a keg of beer. Despite the total white out from 8 to 9:30ish, they finished at 11:55 and there was beer all around. Now they will build the ship and I hear it is amazing from the artist who worked with them in Reno.

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