Walking Towards The Man Near Adapt & 830

All day we had driven in the heat. The driver’s side window will not roll down.

We crawled through the darkness in line, passing the frybread taco stands in Gerlach, NV. inching along. We started in line around 12:50AM and arrived finally at the gates around 5AM. I was exhausted. I got out of the car, joyfully hugged the greeter who welcomed me home, and deliriously rang the bell for Burn virgins. We snaked through the brightly almost-full-moon-lit playa to the camp @ Cock-N-Waffle @ 7:45 and Adapt. We parked and were greeted by Rooster. I was glad to be out of the car. The Ooonst music was going full force over at Tetris, and all I wanted to do was pee and sleep.

Roos showed us around in the dark and got us situated. I needed to pee. I knew logically how the city is layed out, but realistically, never having been there, delirious from sleeplessness, needing to have one of my basic needs met, I couldn’t put it together. I needed to pee. Telling me how the city is layed out was not helpful, just get me to a Port-a-Pot. I crumbled. Black Rock City had already broken me and I wasn’t even in the gates for an hour. I collapsed into Joyce’s arms and sobbed like a baby from exhaustion & anxiety.

I slept.

I slept well.

I slept well considering the barrage of thumping bass coming from the camp behind us over @ Tetris.

And I awoke and we set up the shower. We worked all day in the hot sun and we set up the shower and the graywater evaporation system.  And I was a part of this community.  Me, an outsider, my first Burn, and I’m a part of it. This was Joyce’s 7th Burn. It’s the first full day & I’m trying to figure it out & I fell into the work that needed to be done to make our camp run smoothly.

The Cock-N-Waffle is a hospitality camp.  We serve waffles for breakfast to anyone who drops by.

We provide massages and fresh fruit and music and love to all who enter our camp. And we have a bus.  Oh, yes, we have a bus.  The Ghetto Gypsy.  The bus was lovingly worked on by many members of the Cock-N-Waffle over the course of the entire year, and featured original artwork on the ceiling in panels, done by many local Missoula artists.  The outside of the bus featured some beautiful graffiti done by a local graffiti hero, Echo.  But the centerpoint was the sound system and the lightboard.

Changing the Lightboard on the Ghetto Gypsy

The lightboard originally was conceived as a streaming LED system

that could be controlled by a computer.  Unfortunately, time and money did not allow for this to happen, so we were limited to eight characters that needed to be changed out by hand.  The most family-friendly thing we posted on the board was LOVELUST, and it could be seen for miles on the playa at night.  I’ll let you scour the interwebs for other, more colorful postings.

Over the course of the next 6 days, I would see and experience things of beauty that I cannot express and do them justice. The art cars! The Man! The Temple! (Oh, my God, the Temple.) The art, the creativity. And the city!

The things I saw and experienced were unbelievable.

Of course, there was The Man himself, whose burning was a wild party in great contrast to the reverent burning of the Temple the following night.  From the simplicity of the Cubitron to the contemplative and transformative time spent at Memortrees, I was glad that I opted to, for the most part, leave my camera tucked away from the dust and participate. I climbed a tree, I played putter golf. I ate great food.  I rode my bike. I learned how to adapt, how to dance again & how to let go of expectations. Experience. Be here now.

The playa was a huge art playground.

We tromped up the huge slide called The Wedge, laughing and giggling in our free-fall. We looked out over the lights of the city in a spinning frenzy on The Teeter Totter of Death, we had quiet moments at the top of a mobile Ferris wheel and watched dramatic sunrises in the deep playa. We mourned lost loved ones at the Temple and fire walked through the remaining embers and flames together after the Man burned.

And there was no commerce, save buying ice. If someone did not have enough food or water, someone else would provide for him without question. The atmosphere of love and altruism was ever-present, and I realized that one of my challenges is to bring that spirit back out into the “real” world.  I try to be cognizant of this, and often, I fail. But without failure, there is no growth, and no chance to learn. So I learn. Every day, I learn.

A huge part of the experience was, of course, The Cock-N-Wafflers.

They were amazing – all of them. Each in their own way, they all contributed to the camp and everyone made me feel welcome. They we all took care of each other, shared stories, laughs, food, and formed lifelong friendships. Sure, there were stresses, and we overcame them together. Aboo.

Joyce 

was the reason I was out on the playa in the first place. She helped me adapt to my new surroundings with understanding and tenderness.  We learned how to better communicate with each other, how to give each other space, and how to better trust one another. We stayed up all night exploring the playa together, watched the sunrise, slept till noon, fell in love again and again, and grew together as a couple and as individuals. We explored with wide-eyed curiosity and artistic hunger.  We worked hard to complete the graywater system*, with help from Noel, before arriving in BRC, and stood it up in what I felt was record time.

*(And it worked like a charm. There were about 30 of us in the camp. We had showers almost every day, washing dishes twice a day, and only 10 gallons of un-evaporated water on the final day, which we had sucked out by the port-a-potty guys.)

And the art! There was so much of it.

And all of it free to be experienced and viewed by all. It really got m thinking about the directions I want to take my art – both in what I make, and in how it is consumed. Should I sell it? Should I donate it for sale to worthy causes? Should I give it away? Can I approach my art with a combination of these ideas?   These are questions that I am still asking myself, and still answering. I, and my art, is in an evolutionary process, one that will never end, and one that excites me like I’ve not been excited about my art for a long time.

Collected photos of Burning Man – 2009 – Evolution – 1 and 2

The Leaving and the Left – Teardrop on the Fire

Opening Exhibition 08.07.09 • Noteworthy* Paper&Press

via Wooster Collective.

The Leaving and the Left – A Celebration of Love and Loss, the newest project by Marc Moss, aims to to disassemble language in an attempt to rebuild it again, using new understandings, insights and lifelessons. Built with rusty metal, bits of telephone wire, scrap glass and old tatters of love letters and emails, this collection explores collective memory in a celebration of what once was, what is, and what is yet to come. Visit the site for a sneak look at the art, discussions about the process of its creation and information on participating in the next series. http://www.theleavingandtheleft.com

Yesterday, I couldn’t focus on anything at work, so I took the day off and knocked doors to get people to the polls.  I didn’t believe we could take Montana, but I thought I was making a difference.  The party in the streets last night in Missoula was incredible.  Thank you goes out to all of the volunteers, financial supporters and artists who helped to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president.

See more from Obey Giant.

See artist’s response to Obama’s win

What would happen if the Greyman had nothing to paint over? Not that there wouldn’t be graffiti, but that it was done without paint? Missoula being the environmentally friendly “green” town that it is should have no problems with this, right?

Let’s first have a look at the existing “green” art we already have here in Missoula, namely, SponCon. Spontaneous Construction is one hell of a lot of fun, and, when it’s all over, there’s some great art that gets produced out of recycled materials found out in the Home Resource yard. Often, as was the case this year with the solar shower, the art is quite functional.

I can’t think of any other environmentally friendly art that gets produced in this town, especially not on such a large scale in plain view for public consumption.

The fact that the building of the art at SponCon occurred in the street does not make it street art, of course. That would be a stretch. But it started me thinking about alternative ways to make street art.

Then I remembered a FWDed email my ‘ole man sent me about Scott Wade, who, using a special Jedi mind-trick lightsaber brush, works in caliche covered cars to “unpaint” them into art.

How fun would it be to do something like this on some dirty Suby that’s just come back from the woods? Or the back of a dirty UPS truck this winter? Next summer, should we have an awful fire season, I’d like to see folks come out en mass and do reverse graff on car windows around town.

Scott Wade does Johannes Vermeer

I was hoping to dig through my old email to find the photos, when a good friend of mine sent me over to Environmental Graffiti, where they spotlighted the 35 Greatest Works of Environmental Graffiti.

The dust paintings I’d seen before, and many of the stuff done by “the public” I had also seen before.  Yes, it’s impressive, but I really liked the reverse graffiti done by a guy who goes by Moose.  Oh, Man, I thought, when I saw Moose, how great would it be if some architecture firm in town or maybe a sustainable building supply company contracted with a local artist in town to do a reverse graffiti ad somewhere.
I was disapointed but not surprised to see that the Grey Cancer made it to the SF Broadway Tunnel, defacing Moose’s work.  I’m not so upset that the cancer is on the wall, but that some asshole who thinks he’s a graff artist (You know who you are, troll) would tag such beauty.  Anyway,  Check out what Moose did on San Francisco’s Broadway Tunnel to advertise Green Works:

Moose gets green on San Francisco

Then I started thinking, Where in Missoula would we find a building dirty enough to do something of that scale? I can’t think of any building, but the Orange Street underpass might be a good place. Or not.

But it is well suited for something along the lines of the work that Alexandre Orion does. A transport tunnel in Sao Paolo, Brazil isn’t that far of a stretch from Missoula. OK, well, maybe it is, but I would love to see the faces on some of those SUV driving soccer moms if they were greeted by an Orange Street underpass that had piles and piles of skulls the entire length of the tunnel. Do you think they’d think at all about the detrimental impact their emissions have on the planet, on our economy, on the lives of our men and women dying in the desert?

Alexandre Orion - Skulls in Brazilian Tunnel

What type of reverse graffiti would you like to see in Missoula?  And how would the Greyman handle it?  Would he clean the rest of the building?  Would the artist still be arrested for defacing property, even though he was cleaning it?  Would the punishment be that the artist would have to clean the rest of the building?

If you want to do a little reverse graff and need inspiration, check out the captures from everyday Joes that EnviroGraff has.

Got this in the mail today.  Thought I’d share.

The “Yes We Can” video by will.i.am. The 1000+ positive Obama ads created by MoveOn members. The iconic Obama “HOPE” poster created by artist Shepard Fairey.

Barack Obama’s historic candidacy has sparked an unprecedented artistic outpouring. Now, in partnership with Shepard Fairey and his Obey Giant collective, we’re offering a new way for artists—anyone with a pen and paper qualifies—to share their talents and help elect Barack Obama at the same time.

It’s called Manifest Hope, and it’s a new Obama art contest for 2D and 3D art, from painting to photography to sculpture. The winners will be shown at the Manifest Hope Gallery online and in Denver during the Democratic convention alongside works from dozens of established and influential artists.

If you think you might want to enter, or want updates on the contest, please let us know here:

http://pol.moveon.org/mh/signup/?id=13385-9644571-aI7ZaBx&t=3

If not, can you pass this on to friends of yours who might be interested?

Anyone can enter. You don’t have to be Picasso, you just need to be inspired by Barack Obama and willing to donate your creativity and time to the cause.

But you need to get started soon. The final submissions deadline is August 18th at 11:59 a.m. ET. That’s not much time to conceive and create a piece of art, so get started today.

All submissions will be judged by a distinguished panel of judges—artists from Obey Giant, contemporary art curators, and multi-talented musicians. Finalists will be asked to auction off their pieces, and donate the proceeds to progressive organizations.

Denver will be buzzing during the convention, but this gallery is going to be one of the coolest places to visit there. Plus, the gallery’s going to have an amazing party with live performances by Death Cab For Cutie, Moby, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

We’re not going to send any more emails to the full MoveOn list before the submission deadline. So if there’s any chance you might be interested, you have to sign up for contest updates now:

http://pol.moveon.org/mh/signup/?id=13385-9644571-aI7ZaBx&t=4

Thanks for all you do.

–Peter, Karin, Laura, Ilyse and the rest of the team

P.S. It’s okay to enter a piece of art you’ve already created, as long as you’re willing to offer it up for auction if it becomes a finalist. If you’re ready to enter right now, you can upload your entry here:

http://pol.moveon.org/mh/enter/?id=13385-9644571-aI7ZaBx&t=5

Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 3.2 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

via http://www.anthonyburrill.com/wallpaper_04.html

Over @ Newwest.net, Alexia Beckerling is giving us a glimpse into the studios and performance venues of a handful of local artists and bringing back multimedia glimpses into their creative worlds.

Today’s episode about Jason Bohman, an artist who paints on stage with the Miller Creek band really caught my eye.

For the first multimedia profile in this series on Missoula photographer Marcy James, click here.