The Bay Lights, artist rendering

Internationally renowned artist Leo Villareal has been attending Burning Man continuously since 1994 … in fact, he got his start creating LED and illuminated sculptures for the playa, and is a founder of Disorient. He’s gone on to have his light sculpture and installations presented at museums around the world, including the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. Today, Leo sits on the Burning Man Project Board of Directors and The Black Rock Arts Foundation Advisory Board.

We’re excited to tell you about Leo’s next (and most ambitious) project …

The Bay Bridge, which links San Francisco and Oakland, celebrates its 75th Diamond Anniversary in 2012. To commemorate this auspicious occasion, Leo will create an installation that will turn the bridge into a light sculpture of epic proportions: The Bay Lights Project.

The plan is for Leo and his team to secure arrays of 25,000 energy-efficient white LED lights to the vertical cables of the west span of the bridge, and create elaborate computer-controlled light animations to delight visitors and locals alike.

This amazing sculpture will be in place for two years, including during the America’s Cup yacht races, which are slated to draw an unprecedentedly large international audience to the Bay Area — and we fully support such a grand opportunity to show off San Francisco as a world-class city for the arts.

To learn more and see a video simulation of the project in action, visit www.thebaylights.org. To support the project, please visit www.causes.com/thebaylights.

Leo Villareal's Fine Art

In the spirit of the revolutionary interactive art of Burning Man and Black Rock Arts Foundation, we invite YOU to come out to celebrate and pARTicipate in the Mobule experience! Get involved with this great Black Rock Arts Foundation grantee project and help make it happen! It will be in New York, Black Rock City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, SOON. You know you want to, so make it happen!

Mobule is a kinetic, multi-media, mobile, interactive street art performance that connects people from different cities. Check out theses videos about Mobule on the project’s website: http://www.mobule.org/

The artist, Ludale, needs 3 partners for each performance. It’s really easy to help! All you do is:

- Invite people to participate in an interactive game (invite them to try on the ‘space helmet’ and control the Mobule. Who doesn’t want to wear a space helmet?!?)
- Interview people
- Help video the interviews
- Help pack up the Mobule after the show

Don’t one of those roles sound just like something you could do?

Here are the dates the Mobule needs help. All performances are 9:00 pm – 11:00 pm:

Monday, August 15th
Tuesday August 16th
Brooklyn Bridge park – New York.

Friday, August 19th
Pier 14, Near the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, by the Ferry building – San Francisco.

Saturday 20th, August 20th
Mission Delores Park – San Francisco.

August, 29th – September 4th
Center Camp – Black Rock City.

Friday, September 9th and Saturday 10th
Santa Monica Pier – Los Angeles.

Artist Ludale and the Mobule also need places to stay during their travels, and need a ride to and from Burning Man any day between 8/23 and 8/28!

Can you help? Email ludo [Email address: ludo #AT# ludale.fr - replace #AT# with @ ] if you can!

The Black Rock Arts Foundation has been working on many new partnerships and projects and we want you to help us celebrate them!  After all, it’s our community that makes it all possible.

The Black Rock Arts Foundation is honored to be part of the effort to revitalize the Central Market area in San Francisco in collaboration with the San Francisco Arts Commission, and we love sharing and supporting  Karen Cusolito’s sculptures.

photo: Mark Hammon

Central Market will come alive for the Art in Storefronts launch celebration!  The festivities include receptions at three neighborhood galleries, the debut of two temporary public art sculptures by Karen Cusolito, live music lining Central Market, and Off the Grid food trucks. The community celebration will kick off with the unveiling of six storefront installations and five murals designed by San Francisco artists.

Join the Black Rock Arts Foundation and the San Francisco Arts Commission for this FREE Market Street Blooms Opening Recption.

Music, speeches and mural unveiling:

May 13,  5:00 pm
998 Market St. San Francisco

Read more »

[Leslie Pritchett was the first Executive Director of the Black Rock Arts Foundation. She now runs Leslie Pritchett Public Art Consulting, is a board member at The Crucible, and spearheads the Tiny House Project. This post is part of the Metropol Blog Series.]

If you think about it, Burning Man itself is a temporary work of public art designed by and for its participants. The ways in which Burning Man invites, inspires and fosters organic generation of participatory artwork is fascinating on many levels, and warrants comparison with how temporary public art projects come to life in other places … most specifically, San Francisco.

Parking Meter, 2002

Public art at Burning Man follows a pattern commonly referred to as “self similarity”, which is to say it exhibits similar properties when viewed from both macro and micro perspectives. At a larger scale, the annual creation of the cityscape has a shape as a collective creative effort. As we take a closer look, zooming in through the layers of massive collaborative art endeavors until we arrive at a tiny, ephemeral work generated by someone on a whim on Tuesday afternoon, we see that each of these works requires a complex social consensus to bring it to fruition.

That consensus is that it is wholly worthwhile to serve and be served by our collective creative spirits. No one is trying to meet the unique needs of individual participants. No one is trying to create a piece that will change the shape of the public space it occupies for generations. No one is trying to create a permanent mark on the landscape. No one is trying to please everyone. Therefore, everyone accepts what they encounter as an ephemeral gift to be enjoyed, shared, digested or simply ignored. This particular kind of freedom for both artists and participants creates a wellspring of shared enthusiasm that has its own internal logic, and creates beautiful patterns.

Michael Christian's "Flock" at San Francisco City Hall (Photo by Scott Beale)

By contrast, in order for a work of art to be exhibited in San Francisco, even temporarily, it must be deemed to meet the needs of many different constituent groups. Public art projects are subject to public review and parochial opinion. At least one commission will have to like it. It will be weighed, measured, evaluated and questioned. It will have to squeeze through a narrow opening. An impressive amount of paperwork will have to be generated and signed, including provisions that say, for instance, “‘Sex’ shall mean the character of being male or female” and “liquidated damages of up to $5,000 can be assessed for each entry-level job improperly withheld from the (public art project) hiring process” and that the public art project agrees to abide by the “MacBride Principles” pertaining to the hopeful resolution of employment inequities in Northern Ireland.

Bryan Tedrick's "Portal of Evolution", 2009

The freedom afforded at Burning Man to express oneself openly, fully and completely, illustrates the collective creativity possible when the social contract is rewritten to be broad, expansive and inclusive. And yet, it is an interesting exercise to see if we can transplant some of the fractal creativity that is Burning Man art onto other urban landscapes. If only a few shoots take hold, it will be interesting to see what grows.