Earthdance Arcosanti

Pictures are better than words sometimes.















We received 175-200 people and covered costs. There was just enough to pay the performers as we liked to, cover the expenses of the venue (mostly food), cover promotion and printing costs, and not much else.

But for a first time event, that is pretty impressive. Breaking even is not a bad thing.

We learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. Mostly everything went without a hitch. I would probably do it again. I already ideas as to how I would set up the Vaults a second time. But we'll see about how that actually happens.

It was a great amount of fun. Great to hang out with Ploy, Flam Chen, meet William Eaton and Metrognome. Made good connections. The sculpture was hung and it looked gorgeous. The whole thing started as an indie-folk festival in the day, then evolved into all but a rave at night.

I would do it differently. I would do it again.

Red Lotus - Construction and Creation

This post covers Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Brian agreed to help me with the construction phase since he has welding experience. We had a number of 3/8" round stock delivered by Paul Vigne, Cosanti Foundation's purchaser on Friday. Then we got onto laying it all out and welding.



Cutting to size.



Brendan and Brian at the bender to get the curve we want. It took us a few tries to get the kind of grade we wanted.









The base laid out.



Brian welding.





I will have to hold the pieces into place while he welds the tri-pieces onto the base.



I gave the camera to Segolene, who got a couple of pictures of me in a facemask (makes me look really short).



Cutting the crosspieces to secure the sculpture from the inside.





Welding the top.



Finished product.



That same weekend the grandparents came down and it was great to see them. This is my grandfather taking a look at where all my time is being spent.



That same night, we begin laying out the first layer of muslin.





Next morning, Caberia was nice enough to come along and sew the whole skin on, which turned out to be a much better method than my idea of hot glue and pins.







Sewing the top.



From the inside.





For fun, we put a light inside it at night to see what it would look like.



That night, I begin on the paper mache stage. The light proved to be very popular with bugs, including one tarantula that happened to be on the side.





I got lots of help on the mache stage. Thanks to Andrew, Rebecca, Carri, Crystal, Brendan, Amanda, Zeb, anyone else I'm forgetting.



During the day.



It progressively gets more covered as the hours pass.





Carri last night working on the top. The sculpture is almost entirely covered now. This morning will take care of any more detail paper mache—and then onto wood glue and shellac.



It's starting to come together…

Red Lotus - Membrane Testing

This is an update from Friday, and a report on the progress of Red Lotus. A lot has happened in the past few days. So get ready for a wall of pictures—there's a lot to catch up on.

I wanted to test the skin of the sculpture to see if it would provide the color and translucency I wanted. So I tested the paper mache first on a 1'x1' square with the fabric.



I tested a variety of brochures and fliers to see which ones would turn out the best on the skin of the sculpture.



Without Shellac.





With Shellac.



It works out the way I hoped. Next, onto construction…

Earthdance Installation - Concepts and Planning

One of the great things about designing your own festival is that you can build almost anything you want, according to the limitations of your venue.

For Earthdance, I've been working on a very large sculpture that will hang in the center of Arcosanti's Vaults. I had always wanted to do something interesting with the space—it's just begging to have the space it creates be redefined by something existing in the center. With Earthdance, I figured this would be my chance. And it would be able to tie in with the whole "identity" of the festival. Titled "Red Lotus: Heart of the Earth, Heart of the Sun" (kind of lengthy, but the second part of the title is the "theme" of the festival), the idea is that it's sort of a physical and conceptual centerpiece.

Part sculpture, part Chihuly-esque chandelier, I wanted it to be large. Very large. I had a couple ideas of what I wanted it to be like—first, recycled papers used to create a membrane that was then colored, probably using shellac, to create a translucent form that could glow orange in the night, over the heads of all the people during the DJ sets.

Here are the sketches from my sketchbook. Kind of crappy, but gives the idea. I eventually settled on a three-sided pyramid-like shape, curving inwards to give an organic sort of feeling.







I eventually laid out the sides of the sculpture using yarn in the center of the Vaults so I could get a sense of scale. I basically settled on each side being 15' long on each side. The whole thing will be 5-8 ft "deep".





Kind of hard to see, but the yarn is there.





Jimmi standing next to the yarn outline for a sense of human scale (look hard).





Use your imagination!



The structure itself will be made out of metal rods welded together. A fine muslin will be wrapped around the frame to create the skin, with recycled papers and Arcosanti posters (most of which I designed in this case, oddly enough), paper mached on there and then shellacked to give color and smooth-ish texture. The whole thing will be lit from the inside, so it will glow orange in the night.

I'm just working on a small test piece to test out the paper/muslin/shellac combination. Then Brian and I will be welding the frame together over the weekend. So more updates are forthcoming. Watch closely!