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

Bliss danced with her friends, and photographer Sidney Erthal on the 4th of July and we hope your holiday was just as beautiful. Sidney Erthal’s 2010 Burning Man photos.

A treat showed up in our email box last week from Roy Two Thousand, who I met at the Bliss Dance Opening Ceremony on Treasure Island. He sent a time lapse video of the opening, with his original music.

And as a special treat, Roy Two Thousand also sent along a time lapse of Burning Man 2010, just as we are gearing up to head to the Playa next month. Enjoy!

To read more about the Black Rock Arts Foundation bringing Bliss Dance to Treasure Island – Click Here

Sometimes people ask me why I still volunteer for Burning Man and the Black Rock Arts Foundation after more than 10 years, and I tell them, “Burning Man and the Black Rock Arts Foundation have changed my life”. They have brought breadth and depth to my life in ways I never imagined. I have come to love the gift of art, big art as it turns out. Who makes it, why they make it, where they make it and best of all, how they make it? Thus, one of the gifts in my life is that sometimes I get to meet art in its formation. I love the process. In late 2009 I ran into my friend Lloyd Taylor, (Our Lloyd died a few months ago, we love you Lloyd, Be Cool) and he said he was the production manager on a 40 foot statue with Marco Cochrane and the Bliss Dance Crew, and it was for Burning Man 2010. I was intrigued. And he invited us out for a visit. We met the artist and his crew and we met Bliss Dance.

So a few weeks later when I got a note from Lloyd that said “With the arms and left leg mostly complete, we start the left upper torso this week. Soon we will be attaching some mesh skin and testing lighting. So come visit us at Bliss Dance on Treasure Island, help if you can or just chill in the great space with killer views.” I was thrilled and had to see Bliss Dance as she changed and grew. So off we went. And guess what, I fell in love. She was amazing, even the prototype for the piece was stunning and she captured my imagination. 

Then a few week later we stopped by again and I could not help but blog that we could see Bliss Dance Emerging. Throughout the spring we would stop by, maybe take some cookies or burritos and see the progress. Spring turned into summer and it was Burning Man season. You know how that works at your house. You start connecting more with your campmates, getting excited to see what the art is going to look like and de-dust everything so you can take it to the Playa and get it dusty again.

I blogged from Burning Man 2010 and could not help but include Bliss Dance.

My huband, MonkeyBoy goes to Burning Man in very early August to help build Black Rock City, so I hang our with my friends and since we are art geeks, we packed our lunch, took food for the Crew and went to watch the Assembling of Bliss Dance .

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Tomorrow the Exploratorium in San Francisco will be hosting their first Thursday of every month series called The Exploratorium After Dark. This month’s theme is “Resolution” as in New Year’s Resolutions, however this resolution will follow along a more scientific definition, that being the “ability of our sensory ability to resolve two (or more) things as distinct from one another.”

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!

Please join us for the dedication of Tree Spire, a permanent installation, on Thursday, December 10th at 12:30 pm.

A gift to the families and citizens that enjoy Whitaker Park!

Funded by Burning Man and exhibited in Black Rock City 2007, “Tree Spire” was the first project created by the Seattle art collective, the Iron Monkeys.  They created 4 fifteen-foot tall trees that were part of the “Mangrove”, a group of simulated trees fashioned from recycled industrial materials, surrounding the center-focused icon The Man.  These artificial trees were not burned: they survived to subdivide the blue of other skies.

Brought to the south bank of the Truckee River in downtown Reno, on the corner of Sierra Street and Island Avenue after the 2008 Burning Man event, the “Tree Spire” was displayed in the center of a collection of eight tree sculptures made by five different artist collectives called The Mangrove.  The creative works were made from construction waste and reclaimed materials.  The Black Rock Arts Foundation and a Project Grant from the City of Reno’s Art and Culture Commission funded this project.

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The Shipyard has been home, storage or workspace for many Burning Man installations; Kiki Petit’s Eugiera, Nates Smiths first Fire Vortex, Ryon Gesink’s Eye Arch and Fuck Machine, Jim Mason’s Stockpuppets v2 and ICP, Jake Lyall’s Riot wheel, Borg 2, Liam McNamara’s Clocktower,  Neverwas Haul, Lepidodgera by Rachel Norman, Mike Thielvoldt, Lira Filippini, and Jake Haskell.  Currently, projects for this year’s Burning Man, FishBug and Gee-Gnome, are busily being completed.  Non-Burning Man projects abounded here as well: Girlmark’s Jonny Appleseed processor, Kristies Flyer by Liam Mcnamara, Matt Synder, Peter Luka, Shannon O’Hare and Kimric Smythe, Exxon Valdez Disaster, the Peef-O-Matic powertainer off-grid solar biodiesel 3 phase power system, Destroy the Universe 4 and 2, Dan Goldwater’s Monkeylectric Project, Osseus Labyrint’s Modern Promethius performance (developed here), Barbara Kruse’s Firebirdees built as part of Therm and the Escape From Berkeley (by any non-petroleum means necessary) road rally.

Egeria by Kiki Pettit photo by meuon

Clockworks by Liam McNamara and crew photo by Gabe Kirchheimer

Eye Archway by Ryon Gesink Photo by Mike Woolson

In the beginning of its life, The Shipyard confounded the logic of proper Berkeley Building Department etiquette, by falling in love with the flexibility and durability of the Shipping Container.  Unfortunately, in Berkeley’s eyes, the shipping containers the artists favored as architecture were not considered proper building material.  This innocent misunderstanding prompted the city to turn off power to the facility.  Berkeley being in the dark as to the renegade gang that occupied The Shipyard, did not realize the avalanche of creativity and power hacking they instigated by pulling the plug.  The artists, scientists, gearheads and junkyard enthusiasts, promptly started making their own power and ran the facility off grid for five years.

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It has been said that the culmination of evolution is procreation.

I say it is the process of working your ass off for months in your grimy, stinking sweltering warehouse, breathing the pulverized metal of so many grinders or the pine diaper stink of wet sawdust and every day burning, bashing, smashing, or otherwise breaking your body upon the wheel with a precarious group of batshit crazy artist friends to build something you know will be the GREATEST ART PROJECT EVER to hit the playa.

I say it is spending the last of your paltry paychecks or foraging dumpsters or crawling all over junk yards for supplies and that MISSING LINK to bring your ART TO LIFE and it is the toil and exhaustion of back breaking work, as you are covered with grime, stressed out and sweaty, wondering if you’re going to finish the thing in time, then, when it looks like you won’t pull it off, actually “finishing” and then loading up and driving out to the godforsaken desert to work another week in the dust and the heat that would kill any sane HOMINID.

It really is about SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST and the playa will devour you alive if you lose your focus, but if you’re lucky to finish building your masterpiece sometime around when the floodgates open and Black Rock City fills up with the ART CURIOUS who are searching for YOUR ART TO BLOW THEIR MINDS, you will be able to sit back and watch with wonder what you have wrought and realize…

IT WAS ALL WORTH IT.. . and what’ll we do next year…

Those of you who DARE to IGNORE THE OBVIOUS RIDICULOUSNESS of even trying to make ART in BLACK ROCK CITY are truly EVOLVED.

This year we jump aboard the merry ship HMS LARRY HARVEY to sail to Lake Lahontan where OUR FEARLESS LEADER has decreed that in 2009 our dry lake bed will become the GALAPAGOS of ART, and this year’s EVOLUTION THEME just tickles my PHENOTYPE so much I’m hoping to catch some HOT ALLELE on ALLELE action as we all swim to the bone dry end of the GENE POOL.

Now, I am just a lowly blogger, and not a member of the mighty ORG, so getting your LINKAGE all DISEQUILLIBRIUMED over perceived COMPETITIVE EXCLUSION is futile. I don’t know much about ART, but I know what catches my eye, and let me tell you, we have 160+ projects this year, many of them DANGEROUS, but if CONTROL OF FIRE is a turning point in HUMAN EVOLUTION, I’d say we’re pretty evolved in Black Rock City, if you catch my GENETIC DRIFT.

So, if you can put down your faux fur leg warmers, fairy wings, EL wire, body glitter and ThemeCamp planning maps for a few minutes, I give to you …

MOZE’S TOP TEN ART PROJECTS AND THEN SOME

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