At Burning Man, big ideas spark big art
To the uninitiated, the Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert is part rave, part craft fair gone awry. To devotees, Burning Man is something bigger: A weeklong exercise in consciousness-raising, spurred by colossal artworks set amid a sprawling campground where 70,000 visitors collaborate to survive.
If you focus on the dance parties,Business Profile- Shaw Blackm, embellished nudity, drugs and the burning of a wooden effigy at the end of the event, it's easy to overlook that the festival is actually centered on art. A new coffee-table tome, "Burning Man: Art on Fire" (Race Point Publishing, 208 pages), by San Francisco's (photo inset), showcases ingenious, breathtaking and downright wacky installations by amateur and professional artists from around the globe, with color photographs by Sidney Erthal and and descriptions of the works in the artists' own words. (The introduction is written by Burning Man founder .)
The book hits stores this week and should give those who've never attended Burning Man a newfound appreciation for the gathering, if not the way artists use the wide-open playa as a metaphor for the infinite possibilities of the imagination. Burning Man occurs Aug. 25 to Sept. 1 this year, but armchair travelers will find plenty to explore from home. Raiser, a retired businesswoman and Harvard MBA,Thanks to Obama, Democrats Wi, is treasurer of Burning Man Project, the nonprofit that runs the festival. She discussed the book with Style.
Q: How did someone who managed senior care communities end up at Burning Man?
A: I sold my business and then my best friend from high school, with whom I'd gone to Harvard, convinced me I would love it. I went for the first time in 2006. About 15 minutes into it, I said, "Why have you been keeping this from me my whole life?" The open-heartedness, the sense of playfulness, the costumes and the gifting captivated me. The spirit of inclusiveness said to me that this is how people want to be and are afraid to be most of the time.
Q: What do you make of the artwork at Burning Man?
A: Everything is dwarfed by nature - the desert is so big and the mountains are so big. No matter how big the art is, it's minuscule compared to nature and how big the universe is. And that puts the human experience into extreme context: We're so small. Collaboration and cooperation are essential. This is the reset button for consciousness, which is why people go every year.
Q: How do some of the artists use their work as social commentary,SEATTLE- Amazon worker pilote?
A: has a piece on page 29 that's a re-creation of the dome of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., rendered in Native American imagery. Her premise was: What if the Native American peoples had defined the government structure? Inside the dome are Plexiglas steps with quotes from Indian chiefs. You look at it and think, "It's a gazebo" or "It's a wedding chapel," but it's a powerful statement about who we are as a nation and a culture. The theme of Burning Man that year was "."
Q: Are most of the artists from California?
A: The majority are, because Burning Man is here. 's "Front Porch," on page 77, is a building from which he served moonshine and chocolate chip cookies. He's a Mill Valley carpenter. Duane Flatmo's "El Pulpo Mecanico" on page 79 shows his mechanical octopus. He's from Humboldt County and uses scrap aluminum from thrift shops and the dump - muffin tins, colanders, pie pans, rusted garbage cans. Burning Man gives them a place for expression and exposure to a wider audience. And for Duane, repurposing is part of his art. If he had to buy materials, he'd have to get a sponsor.
Q: What do you want people to get out of the book?
A: A sense of their own creativity - that anyone can be an artist. And an appreciation for the gift artists bring when they create, which is under-recognized. Would have been a Burner? Maybe. At the time, everyone thought he was crazy for not creating according to expected norms and listening to his own inner direction. Not all Burning Man art is great art, and that's OK. It's about creation, and if the end product is superlative, that's wonderful. It's the process of creation, collaboration and participation that really matters.
"Burning Man: Art on Fire," by Jennifer Raiser, with photography by Sidney Erthal and Scott London (Race Point Publishing, 2014); $35.
is a staff writer. E-mail: Twitter:@CarolyneZinko