Art Panels for Burning Man

I can't go to Burning Man this year, but I'm sending some art out to the desert. My friend Christina asked me to spend the day with her a couple weeks ago, working on some art panels that will become part of a maze that they are installing as their project, the Seattle CORE Project.

Each panel in the maze is 2' x 8', and we painted both sides of one panel, which took most of the day. It was great to spend the day out, collaborating together. I think that our styles and ideas meshed pretty well, too.

We came up with the idea to have a fire theme on one side and a water theme on the other side:

I love that I can't even tell where her art began and mine ended. We were able to mesh it together very nicely, which is not a super easy task, if you have ever worked on a project with other people. But this worked out quite nicely, and even though I cannot attend the actual event, I am happy that a small part of me will be there and be enjoyed by other attendees. 

I love the idea of temporary art. That is one of the main things that drew me to Burning Man initially; the idea that everything is temporary, and we must make the most of the precious time that we have here on this temporal plane. As an artist, I want to create beautiful things, and I crave the company of other creative humans. I often get very attached to my work, but I am learning one of the labors in life is letting go of that which you are attached to and moving forward to new discoveries, new creations, and new realizations, whilst holding on to that which makes you a vital, essential human... Every day is a new experience, and we build upon what we feel is important while leaving behind what we deem of lesser value. And that is different for every human, so we are constantly striving to balance our needs and values, both with and against other humans' needs and values.

These wood panels will be installed for the week of the event at the end of August, then everything will be burned in a huge effigy, as is tradition. The desert is slowly transformed from a barren ancient lakebed, to a beautiful thriving city, to a lakebed again, with no trace of the event that took place there. It is an annual reminder of the temporal, momentary nature of our lives. I love the poetry in that.