Dust

This was taken after two days of dust, wind and sun, working my butt off to get Vishnu's Dream set up on the playa. The photo says it all!

Burning Man Pix

Vishnu's Dream a Success! (well, mostly)

We're back from Burning Man and slowly re-entering the default world, reassembling body parts after the 1,000+ mile drive... Our minds may follow in a few days

Vishnu's Dream was a success! We needed way more time to assemble it than I expected, but it went up without problems thanks to the support of Steven, Fred, Alan and Deedee, and about twenty Burners we flagged down to help with tilting it up into place. It survived the winds which seemed way more frequent this year than last time. The windmill self-destructed so the "whirling images of the playa" never worked as intended, but the digital images from the infrared camera worked and provided a nice disorienting effect at night... (you had to be there...) And it was definitely the centerpiece of the 9:00 plaza. Steven's cobra heads were awesome too!

Here's a picture during the day and another at night.

Shared Creation

A project this scale takes many hands (see blog entry below about painting the murals). But some of those hands aren't even local. In fact some of them are in Seattle. Steven Wright, aka "Buckaroo," is building the cobra heads in Seattle with the help of nephew Danny and neighbor Cindy.

Lots of e-mails and phone calls and pix flying through the e world to make this happen right: how big to make the heads, how to light the eyes and mouth, how many amps is that, how will we mount them to the mural frame?? And just in case, bring some green paint and a hacksaw to field fit if necessary...

And just to show you Steven is doing Burning Man right he's rented a panel van to haul all this to the playa, is plotting how to make a big sun shelter for our camp, and trying to squeeze in some work too.

Here are some photos of the cobra heads under construction.

We're Famous!!

OK, so actually we haven't even made it to the playa yet and I don't know for sure that everything will actually fit together and work right... but that's all part of the art process, right? Right?? Well, check out the Burning Blog for a perfect description of what the art process is all about - all the uncertainties and challenges and yes, joys.

Vishnu's Dream was listed as one of Moze's top ten art installation for this year. How cool is that? But... now the pressure is on to be sure it all works out right. Well, there's that "trust the Universe" thing again as I like to say. Everything seems to be falling into place, so ya gotta trust that it's meant to be.

Meanwhile, Steven is getting the cobra heads finished in Seattle and I'm doing the last few finish items here in Estes. And Deedee is finishing my bike for the playa, rusticating a few cobras for it, etc. We'll hook up some EL lights for our bikes soon. Check out her blog entries about her bike here.

Getting psyched to GET ON THE ROAD and get to the playa! Woohoo! Joe

Mural Painted!

Sunday we had a painting party for the mural. (It's 10' x 39') Janice, Kathy, Jane, Rex and Jolee helped Deedee and me for most of the day and we got it all done! Looks great! Everyone seemed to find their place on the mural and we didn't have too much worry over about stepping on top of each other or letting the paint dry or keeping busy. It was fun, if long, day.

The Lotus Petals Fit!

Here's a photo of the top cone with the outer lotus petals installed. Carla did a beautiful job sewing the petals - it all fit together perfectly!!