Burners Ascending to Prominence in the Art World

Art Basel in Miami is coming up in a couple of weeks (Dec 3-6). Many Burners love to attend this event, and more and more Burner artists are exhibiting their work there. In 2015, there will be 267 galleries from 32 countries in the official show.

This year things are going to the next level for glowy- blinky- flamey- mobile- popup- UV- trippy- art (or whatever you want to call this genre…), with more than a dozen Burner artists teaming up to display their works in an air-conditioned warehouse filled with art cars.

Burner Stoke says:

Edge Art Fair is open to the public from 12:00 pm – 12:00 am each day. Its located in an air conditioned warehouse located at 1584 NW 29th St, Miami, 33142 just on the Edge of Wynwood.

Although this is our first year our artists have spent over 100 years combined at the Burning Man arts festival in Nevada and we are bringing that look and feel to Basel.

Yarrow Mazzetti (cofounder of the fair)  is the most prolific mutant vehicle builder in the world having transformed 26 cars into mutant vehicles. Our ladybuggies (type of mutant vehicle but consider it mobile street art) will be at the fair. Yarrow will also be unveiling two new pieces for the first time. The first are his series of Jellyfish which are 3 – 10 foot tall fiberglass shell jellyfish embedded with LEDs and Fiberoptics that change color to the music… He is also unveiling his “Nails” piece which are 8 foot long nails which will eventually form a major part of his street art.

JROC will be unveiling his 9 foot tall stainless steel dragon head.

Kenny Ferron – will be installing two LED music sensitive palm trees.

Samantha Scott – will be live painting models in blacklight paint. As she dresses all in black all you will be see from afar is a paintbrush glowing in blacklight paint – painting the model. Her photographs of models she has painted are for sale. If someone want to prebuy their piece they can participate in the painting of the model.

Richie Driscoll will be coming from LA to install his Chain Man piece. Chain man lives in an interactive chain land which the artist will build. Think adult version of a playground.

Peter Ruprecht and Tomas Loewy are two of the most successful photographers who amongs other areas have consistently shot Burning Man and so the entire walls of the warehouse will be covered in black material – with spot lights illuminating Tomas and Peter’s photographs.

Jeff Silver will be unveiling his light sandbox – which is an interactive sandbox built five feet of the ground. When you move your hand through the sand the lines you created illuminate by the LED lights which have been placed underneath.

When Hurricane Sandy took out power to Lower Manhattan, the Lady Buggies were one of the few things still glowing off

When Hurricane Sandy took out power to Lower Manhattan, the Lady Buggies were one of the few things still glowing off in the Meatpacking District

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I also hear that crowd favorite Rob Buchholz will be exhibiting some of his work in Miami this year.

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We support Burner art getting out into the wider world. It seems this sort of thing is how we take Burner culture to millions of people – more so than going on Dr Phil and Oprah with the message “hey, are you grieving? Come to our Temple, and be sure to make a non-deductible $419 donation to our tax-exempt corporate structure on the way in” – like some sort of Discordian televangelist. Or going on The Simpsons with “hey you can drop acid blue-haired Mom like it’s the 60s all over again and rekindle the romance with your husband”. This is bringing a caricaturized view of our culture to people who really could care less about the art and participation, and just want to be spectators. They may or may not have a good time, but how is it changing the world? Meanwhile, art is changing the world, always has been, always will be.

Bringing Burner art into the mainstream and high end of the art world is ultimately going to impact many, many more people than the Burning Man Project’s plans of panel discussions and preaching to the converted. What’s it all about, the art? Or the preaching? We need to be kicking down the doors for these artists, helping elevate them to the highest levels possible, and supporting them when public controversy is stirred – as with Marco Cochrane’s recent installation of Truth Is Beauty which has been causing disquiet on a $200 million tech campus.

If Burning Man is the Special Olympics of art, Art Basel is the Olympics. The association with the Burner world may not be the same stamp of credibility in Miami as it is in San Francisco’s Mission District. Regardless, sold out shows send a strong message, so please help support these Burner artists. If you’re anywhere near Art Basel this year, check this out, tell your friends.

Here is their flyer:

 

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Check out Kenny Ferron’s SubSqwad at the Alchemy Burn in Georgia:

 

Truth Is Beauty Gets Permanent Home in San Leandro

truth is beauty kulturologia

Image: Kulturologia.ru

Marco Cochrane’s Truth is Beauty sculpture is going to San Leandro, part of a drive to turn the East Bay into a tech mecca. It’s causing some controversy, due to the implied nudity

From ABC7 News:

A sculpture of naked woman three-stories tall is supposed to draw tech companies to an East Bay city, but it’s placement near the San Leandro BART station means everyone will see it.

“She’s big and she’s beautiful… and she has no clothes on,” Deborah Acosta, the chief innovation officer at the City of San Leandro, said.

At 55-feet-tall and illuminated by thousands of LED lights, you can’t miss the sculpture “Truth Is Beauty.” Built by Bay Area artist Marco Cochrane for Burning Man 2011, she’ll find her permanent home at San Leandro’s new tech campus.

“Art is really the underlying base for anytime you’re doing innovation,” Acosta said.

Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and this time the beholder is a private company. The city required the developer set aside 1 percent of its construction budget for public art.

“This was a very unusual step to require art in a new development and I think you’re going to see it as a model going forward that we’re going to require it of everybody who wants to develop,” Acosta said.

But since it’s on private property there was no public input on what art should be chosen.

“I think it’s great! I mean, San Leandro is out in front,” resident and business owner Mike Miraglia, of Miraglia Catering, said. He says he isn’t offended by the sculpture’s full frontal. “Whatever draws attention and brings people to San Leandro would be good.”

Others say it draws the wrong kind of attention. Illustrated in a letter to the editor of the San Leandro Times, Gerry Isham writes, “Truth is beauty, but tacky is forever.”

Yet city planners say they’re hoping to attract people who are attracted to this art.

“Really change the image of San Leandro with millennials, tech millennials, women in technology, so these groups that can create a new sort of Mecca for start-ups and tech folks in the Bay Area,” Greg Delaune, UIX Global

“Really great art inspires controversy and it’s the conversation that needs to take place around this that is wonderful,” Acosta said.

The sculpture will be installed sometime next summer.

[Source: ABC7 News]

Marco’s R-Evolution

truth-and-beauty-2013Marco Cochrane‘s amazing sculptures are built by hand, a combination of clay molding and spot welding. Bliss Dance is so strong that you could walk on her torso, and yet all the weight is concentrated on a single foot. Last year, Truth is Beauty debuted in all her glory, and was surely one of the most memorable art pieces of the year. If you went to Burning Man and took photos, but didn’t get one of this, I’d be amazed. The first time I went to check it out they gave me a bracelet to show supports for the sisters on the Playa – which was pretty special to me personally because my sister was flying in later that day for her first Burn.

Now Marco is creating the third installment in his Bliss Project series, R-Evolution. Support the project here. He has used the same model throughout the series, 6-foot tall Deja Solis. “Truth is beauty represents the moment of her accepting her truth: that she’s tall”, says Marco.

The Monterey County Weekly shares the back story to the series:

He found his model in the now-shuttered Blockbuster Video next to the Pacific Grove Trader Joe’s. And he let her, Monterey native Jamie Deja Solis, pick the poses for his pieces.

For “Truth Is Beauty,” she chose a stretching moment she remembered in front of the mirror, finally embracing the atypical height that had always made her self-conscious. “He asked me, ‘When did you truly feel beautiful?’” Solis says. “I was learning to self-love.”

At the base of the statue in Black Rock Desert, a single question written in hundreds of languages asked onlookers to consider a world where that kind of comfort, freedom and security were realized: “What would the world be like if all women were safe?” Safe to be themselves, to be open and affirming, to be beautiful.

“Women always tell me, ‘I’m safe,’” says Cochrane, now based in Mill Valley. “But can you walk down street and look a man in eye and smile?’ ‘No way,’ they say.”

They held talks and distributed 10,000 wristbands with a picture of the sculpture and the words, “We stand with you,” starting right there at Burning Man. There are no available stats on sexual assault on the playa, but anecdotes are all too easy to come by. And the reporting is complicated by the lack of rape kits to collect forensic evidence in Black Rock City.

“It was weirdly magical to meet so many folks,” Solis says. “Sometimes it was making a woman know she can be beautiful, that she didn’t need to force it. Other times it was telling her partner to stay present when she’s feeling open. Men often don’t allow the vulnerability to be open and truly share. They should be able to feel that and express it.”

Now an international tour is in the offing, with which Cochrane will continue asking people to look at body language more than body parts. “If you’re a man and you’re straight, you’ve been stunned by a woman before,” Cochrane says. “But there is a real person living in that body. Deja is a regular person. The statute is intended to be stunningly beautiful, to knock your socks off, but remind you there’s a real person there, and she’s safe.”

Maybe most stunning of all: That we need to be reminded one in three women has been sexually assaulted. But “Truth Is Beauty” also reminds us, even ugly truths can be stunningly beautiful.

There’s certainly a noble message behind Marco’s art, which is something you won’t find everywhere at the world’s biggest mutant art festival. For example, I’m thinking, the Arctic Boob Cooler I remember from 2004 was maybe towards the other end of the spectrum of nobility – yet also very popular and memorable.

For R-Evolution, Marco has created a 15-foot high clay sculpture of the piece from her lithe form.

If you like the art, support the project. Here’s some details from Marco:

How was Cargo Cult for you? 

Wow what a year we had!  With all of your help, we were able to raise enough money to complete Truth is Beauty and bring her to Burning Man in 2013.  We are so gratified by the response she received on the Playa – even we were amazed at how she looked from different angles, at different times a day, and OH! the light shows – 6 different shows thanks to Ka-Ping Yee, our uber-talented lighting engineer!!

We felt awe witnessing the impact on people as they read the inscription around her base: “What Would the World be Like if Women Were Safe?”  There was Playa magic when Truth is Beauty replaced the “I” in BELIEVE after it fell down in the pre-event windstorms and when she held a rainbow or the sun.  There were the hundreds of people who stopped us to tell us their own personal stories of how they were affected when they saw her, and thousands who wrote their feelings and opinions down in the books we provided.  We handed out nearly 10,000 “Together We Stand” wristbands, calling on those who wore them to take active responsibility for the safety of their sisters; each a unique opportunity for a personal connection and conversation.  It was such a success, we are working on how to bring this campaign to the wider world!

Thank you…Thank you…Thank You…for opening your hearts and minds to the messenger and the meaning!!

 What’s Next?

I have started work on R-Evolution, the third sculpture in the Bliss Project series.  I recently finished the 15 foot clay sculpture  – the first stage in the process – and plan to start the mold to cast the pieces from which the steel structure will be built in the next week or so.

Our plan is to debut her at Burning Man 2015.  Why not this year?  These sculptures take thousands of hours to build and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.  It simply cannot be done in one year.  So, we embark on another two-year build, but we really need your help because we not only need time, we need funds as well!  Through a combination of this campaign, grants and generous individual donors and foundations we hope to be able to raise all of the money we need this year to get R-Evolution where she needs to be so that we can complete her in time for her planned debut.

To meet our goal, we will need to have her torso and calves complete by August.  To do this, we need to be able to purchase the steel, and all of the ancillary welding materials as well as the rust-treatment on these pieces.  Of course we will also have to cover operating costs such as rent, utilities, insurance, certified welders, engineering and labor for those who will be working full-time.

What is R-Evolution?

Another collaboration with Deja Solis , R-Evolution is different than Bliss Dance and Truth is Beauty. There is no overt action in her expression; she is not dancing in the face of danger, she is not reaching to meet herself and find her own truth.  In R-Evolution, Deja explores and expresses what she feels like when she can just be…a whole person… a woman, radiating her energy into the world.  Of course, this won’t solve everything, but we think a world where women are free to just be is an essential first step.  It’s R-Evolution it’s…

                     What the world will be like when women are safe.

What was your inspiration for the Bliss Project Series?

The story of R-Evolution and The Bliss Project began when I was 7-years old and my best friend was a 9-year old little girl.  One day I was told, in way too much detail for a little boy, that she had been raped right outside of my house.  It was incomprehensible, horrible, I never forgot, I never understood…it still haunts me.  I thought…that man couldn’t have realized my friend was a person…if he really could see her, this wouldn’t have happened.

I grew up in the Bay Area in the 60’s and 70’s, in the philosophical revolution and turbulence of those times.  I learned to deeply appreciate feminine energy, influence and strength…and realized that the objectification of women imprisoned women and also men.  I also saw first-hand that one person, or a small group of people, can start a movement that can make a difference and change the course of history.

In my 20s I discovered sculpting, and in particular, the joy of seeing and then sculpting women; of the healing energy and power that I saw when women were not afraid…when they could be present, when they could be themselves, speak their minds…and the heroism it takes to do this in the face of real danger in their daily lives.  For more than 25 years I have been sculpting women.  At first glance, they appear to be classical figurative nudes, but they are not.  They are radically modern…revolutionary.  These women are safe, present. Look at them. They have chosen their own expression, so you will see the actual woman, the person, her energy and spirit.  It is my intent that these sculptures exude this healing energy and inspire us to take action; to finally say enough is enough.

What can Burners do to help?

Art can illuminate the human condition and be a catalyst to social change …My hope is to expand human consciousness and inspire men and women to take action to end violence against women, beginning a healing process that will make room for women’s voices, thus allowing all of us to live fully and thrive! I am asking you to stand with us!

Thank you to everyone for the incredible support you have provided in the past, and to everyone who is considering supporting R-Evolution. There is just no way projects like this could happen without you!

Donate now and spread the word. We have some great perks, including pendants, mini-sculptures  – 6 inch versions – experiences., etc.  Plus, everyone get’s a Together We Stand Wristband.  Check it out!

Visit Bliss Dance now on Treasure Island, San Francisco – even little babies who can’t speak yet love it.