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!

Flam Chen in Mesa and Tucson

This past weekend saw a visit into Tucson. I wanted to get to know the city a bit—I really haven't seen the majority of cities out here in Arizona, and this was one in particular I wanted to see. But the added bonus was that Flam Chen was doing two shows in the area—first in Mesa on Friday, and then again in Tucson on Saturday. It was good to see some familiar faces I hadn't seen since July 21st.

Of course, I came back with pictures.

First, from their performance in Mesa at the Mesa Arts Center.

















Ruben spinning Poi with flares on stilts.











Then, Saturday show in the evening on "Bat Night"—a celebratory evening where Tucson residents watch 40,000 bats fly out from under the Cambridge Avenue Bridge. Sponsored by the Rillito River project, the night was organized to raise awareness about water usage. Flam Chen flew balloons at the different heights where the water table had receded from in depth over the course of 200 years of develop. The first balloon was flown at 25ft, where the water table used to exist naturally in Pima county. The last balloon, reflecting the modern day situation, flew at almost 200ft high.

Before the balloons are lifted to their appropriate "depths".



The Shadow Walkers freak out the crowd.













Balloons start to get raised.





The bats come out, and fly through the balloons.





Both these events were probably benefit concerts, so Flam Chen did them for free, essentially (at least as I understand it). For these ones they were mostly working on a skeleton crew. But even with that, and especially on Friday, they put on a good show.

Earthdance Arcosanti - Tonight, your host is…

I've mentioned in passing in a couple of past posts that I am organizing something called "Earthdance Arcosanti".

Well, consider this a bit of a catchup post. This has been in the works for nearly a month and a half now.

The whole thing started during the 90th. Michael Gosney, one of the board members of the Cosanti Foundation, struck up conversation with me. He also happens to be one of the directors of something called the Earthdance Network. He explained to me, having been impressed with some of my work for Arcosanti, that he'd like to see an Earthdance festival happen at Arcosanti, and that I seemed to be a perfect person for organizing such a thing.

I didn't know what Earthdance was—later, I learned it was a grassroots, global festival that originally started in the 90's, and had grown to include nearly 300+ locations in over 60 countries. It was all synchronized on the same date, almost on the same time. Most of the proceeds go to charities and the like.

I appreciated the fact he thought so highly of me, but kind of laughed it off. On the heels of the 90th I was worn out, burned out, and stressed out. I didn't want to help produce another festival, much organize it entirely from the ground up. The 90th had been a huge headache in so many ways. Though I realized later on that this would be my chance to "re-do" the 90th, and in my own way—to have everything nailed down almost a month in advance. to skip all the mistakes there seemed to be from behind the scenes, and basically make just as successful a festival with fewer resources, less stress, and better results. A "lean alternative" if you will.

Well. At the time I didn't give Michael's offer a second thought. Though I found he was a tenacious person—he contact Brian Fritz, a DJ and also an Arcosanti resident. Brian was convinced and decided he would head it up, and approached me with the offer from Gosney again. At this point I realized that if Brian was going to go through the proper channels and make the festival happen one way or another, I wouldn't want to be by the sidelines. So I accepted the offer (at the time I felt like I was getting sucked in, for better or worse), and Brian and I became "Team Earthdance Arcosanti" so to speak.

The following month was a steadily growing fury of brainstorming, conceptualizing, planning, conversating, networking, and politicking. I worked up a logo, a modified version of the official Earthdance logo (a spinning globe on a lotus, which I turned into a brown apse on a fiery-red, agave-like plant), and a general budget. Our plan was to not just have a festival for the fun of it, but to make the Cosanti Foundation a bucketload of money. From the beginning, the event wast to benefit the future construction of Arcosanti.

Back then, getting Flam Chen as one of the headliners was just a glimmer in the eye. But Paul and Nadia, the nervous system for the performance collective that is Flam Chen, were open to the idea. And this time we wanted to pay them for their work, however small it might be. They agreed to mark the date on their calendar.

Soon, getting together the headline lineup followed: William Eaton, a familiar face at Arcosanti and a two-time grammy nominee, who could bring a finer touch to the event and set it apart from the usual rave reputation Earthdance festivals tend to carry. Then came Ploy, who also played at the 90th and are good friends of Brian. Finally, Metrognome, an accomplice of Flam Chen was included as part of their group.

The overall budget was approved by Operations and the various managers at Arcosanti. After that, the event was official, but Brian and I were left to plan the event almost completely by ourselves. It probably wouldn't have worked any other way—no one, including us, wanted to do another 90th. But I had faith that it wouldn't be, in terms of the headache and sheer labor. Cosanti Foundation would or benefit from the event, but would not technically organize it. This gave us a lot more creativity and flexibility than we could have gotten otherwise. For certain things we had to go through the typical channels, but as people saw how we were organizing it (and how early we started—more than a month before the festival's date we had teams of volunteers, responsibilities, logistical structuring, and the directors of each team outlined and all but set in stone), they began to have faith that everything would be just all right.

Over this time, the festival has grown to being more than just a music event. While it is only noon to midnight on a Saturday, we will have multiple installation artists, Flam Chen will perform constantly almost the whole day, we will have vendors, and possibly a resident art show. Weeks ago I produced and uploaded an Earthdance Arcosanti website specifically for the event, which most people in the administrative office balked at when I first threw out the idea—the Arcosanti site alone has been a year-long project, with very little to show for.

In the end, it just comes down to know-how, timing, and organization.

I have had a complete blast. It has been a ton of work, and most of it has gone by so fast that I didn't even tell I was having a ton of fun doing it. Over the course of logos, fliers, web banners, and posters, a full brand and identity was created for the event. Promotional materials are and have been nested in Sedona, Flagstaff, Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale, Prescott, and Tucson. A social networking component has been in process and growing over the past month as well. An online admissions system was coordinated and put online about two weeks ago.

It is a little under a month before the festival starts. I'll be creating an installation in the center of the Vaults for the event. About the only things that have to be done now are creating that installation, filling volunteer spaces, and putting the finishing touches on the event logistics. I'm hearing rumblings of the kind of performance Flam Chen is planning, and it will be nothing short of bombastic (in many senses of the term, more on that at a later time—rumor has it they'll be bringing their latest toy Paul has created, dubbed the "Fire Cannon").

It has been a great blast. Brian has taken care of promotion and performer coordinating, I've been promotional design and event planning. Logistics has been covered by both of us, as well as interfacing with the Arcosanti community. From what I can guess, there is a lot of groundswell behind the event, despite that another Earthdance is happening in Phoenix. We'll only know how well a job we did promoting when the day of the event comes.

The anxiousness of "I hope it works" is starting to set in. At the same time, it is satisfying to know that, at this stage, we've done almost all we can to make this event everything it could be and much more. I'll be damned if we don't get 300 or so people, which is what we've been aiming for. But even if we didn't we've designed the budget so that it can scale down to the minimum.

So if you live in Arizona or are thinking of making a roadtrip… think about where you want to be on September 26, from noon to midnight. Because, if everything goes as planned, it will be a night to remember.

Awesome Restaurant in Phoenix

I'll explain more about how and why I ended up in Phoenix this past Friday—it was to promote the Earthdance festival (which I'll describe in a future blog post, I promise). The shameful thing lately is that I have not been able to post many pictures due to having lost my camera charger. Of course, I found it in my suitcase last week, so this Friday night I took it with me and had the joy of actually being able to do some photography.

So get ready for a picture post! The dinner that night was at the District in the Phoenix Sheraton. A friend of someone in our group to promote the festival worked there, so we got a bit of a nice in. The food was fantastic (I felt disgusting, having a giant cheeseburger with a bunch of Italians that really hadn't been outside of Arcosanti yet, but I needed it all the same and didn't regret it), but the decor was even better. Here are the photos from the night. I'll have to post-process them later.







All the glasses cases had some special lighting, which I particularly enjoyed.







A few shots of the huge lights that hung inside the hotel before one of the hotel staff pulled me over.

Time to Move On

After having cleaned my room, I feel like I've come back to a state of simplicity and well-being. There's a zen saying: you can tell the mind of the person by the state of their bedroom.

Lately, mine has been a complete disaster—on both fronts.

The past few weeks I've experienced a sort of falling out with Arcosanti—you could say. You could probably put it as the "honeymoon being over"—though I'm not sure what that says about marriage. But suffice to say, I cannot put my finger on the feeling entirely. It may be burnout—or multiple burnouts, one after the other. Disillusionment with the practicality (or in some cases impracticality) of the place. There are so many dualities of this place. In one breath it is beautiful and ugly, in another it is both ungainly and elegant. It is at once utopian, but hampered by beauraucracy; it attracts incredible, skilled and talented people from across the world, yet is consistently emaciated due to a lack of human power and resources.

It is so many things rolled into one. From day to day I may shift from being extremely pleased with my decision to come here (I don't regret it) to feeling like I would crawl out of my own skin to simply leave. But the later feeling has been the more consistent one, with varying degrees of urgency from day to day.

Consistency of a feeling is usually the sign that it is set on a solid foundation. Consistent signs are the ones that need to be listened to.

Thus I have pushed up my deadline for leaving Arcosanti from the mid-winter to no less than October 14. Quite a big shift. It was partially because family will be in town and flying back East—so I'm simply catching a plane for convenience. Yet even so… if it was not for Earthdance Arcosanti, I would have left a week ago.

Perhaps it was the fact that I was taken with Proteus Creative and the initiative to start my own business—re-tool my skillset, polish my portfolio, get an apartment—start a career and the next phase of my life, essentially. It was like a switch had been flipped, but there was nothing I could do about it. I've not been able to consistently apply myself to freelancing. A fulltime job is just that—fulltime.

So the last few weeks have been more about survival, mentally and emotionally, rather than anything else. I'm considering buying more canvas to keep painting, since that was my outlet for sanity after the 90th (some days I wondered if that had permanently cut my time here much shorter than I had ever anticipated from the beginning). The logistics of shipping paintings, or finding a local buyer, or whatever, are not that romantic, or even practical. But when the Muse calls, it is important to obey. At least for me, it's like neglecting an organ.

So if you asked me the question "what do you think of Arcosanti?" I could give the PR answer (the one I give as a tour guide), the personal answer, the professional answer, and the touristic answer. All would be made of the same material, but have very different shades—as if they were all blue, but they actually ranged from cyan, to turquoise, to midnight black, to cobalt.

In a way it pains me that a project so ambitious could have so many troubled details. Maybe I am a perfectionist. But some days, I wonder if the architecture—or, rather, the construction of it—is that radical or unique. In terms of the thermal mass and using concrete for both heating and cooling, Arcosanti is not that great of an example—most of it is not insulated nor bridged properly, and in some case the practicality of things is eschewed for the sake of aesthetics. And even in aesthetics, certain parts of it feel like it was… well, done by volunteers. One of my pet peeves lately has been the fact that 75% of the concrete here, including interior walls and ceilings, was poured with plywood. Concrete picks up whatever imprint it's poured onto, so the concrete actually looks like gray plywood. I look up on my ceiling in the East Crescent, and there's a gorgeous silt-cast painting there, hand-done by Paolo Soleri. And then it's surrounded by plywood grain patterns, complete with visible seems and punched-out knotholes. I keep on thinking—if only they had covered that surface in plastic—a big plastic sheet, then that rough, grainy concrete would have come out looking like marble. And how long would that have taken?

I understand there is an urgency to build about things… but I just find it sad that so much here has to be sub-standard due to a lack of resources, knowledge, materials, or whatever. At the end of the day it just becomes depressing. The concrete thing was only really brought to my attention by an architect here when she pointed out the concrete surfaces here. She expressed the same frustration that's now overtaken me. She'll be leaving in a week.

I think everyone goes through this sort of disillusionment phase if they stay here long enough. If they stay past it, it's because there is a core function of the community and place that jives with the direction of their life. They don't mind working for minimum wage, regardless their qualifications—they don't mind the politics, they don't mind that not everything works the way it's supposed to. By any measure it is much better than a life they could have in Phoenix, or in suburbia, or in "normal" civilization. And that's why some people stay here for years and years. For some, Arcosanti has become their life, and they simply can't imagine living anywhere else.

Regardless though, I've come to a state personally where I know that I need to leave. The core functions of my life don't jive with the core functions of the community. I have thought about setting up my graphic design business here—it would certainly be walking the talk in terms of stimulating the economy here. And it's not impossible to do—the red tape is not so thick that a truly good idea with a well-thought out plan will be stopped in the tracks. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. But as a business owner I have to think if I actually want to set up shop here, as opposed to somewhere else, even though I may be able to work remotely the whole time.

It may happen some day. But for now, at least, I'd much rather be forming client relationships in Baltimore and DC. I'd much rather be a working painter in a place where there's a huge amount of artistic ferment already in place. I'd much rather feel like I have more material to draw on as a writer, and be able to travel across town to visit people (by public transit, mind you). I want to take a roadtrip through the west coast—a wanderlust that is rare for me. I need a place that I can consistently improve my self, and a place that does not haphazardly inspire me on some days and depress me on others.

It's not so much that I wish to be critical of Arcosanti—everyone is critical of it, even the residents of a decade or more. Even Paolo Soleri—he knows better than anyone else its modest, almost anemic state. It's simply that it's become obvious to me that the next phase of my life, which I'd just love to dive into head-on, cannot work within the context of the place and culture that makes Arcosanti. Maybe someday that would work. But that's a big if, and I don't know when that someday will be.

100° Studio Loft Party

I've obviously been neglecting this spot for some time now. Mostly due to the amount of things I'm working on—as life goes in waves, so does blog writing. Usually during the end of the day I don't have any brainpower left. At the beginning of the day I'm hunting for freelance gigs on the side. On the weekends I make a conscious effort to relax as best I can as possible—and if that doesn't work, I'm usually doing something for Proteus Creative or doing Javascript and JQuery tutorials.

So the neglect comes from a couple of important dates August has seen and passed:

-for awhile now I've had my own studio in the Arcosanti lab building. I totally cleaned he space and made it my own, and it's more or less my second home nowadays.
-I have begun painting again, with three to my name and a fourth in the works (I took a break for a week or two).

Now, Arcosanti has some great spaces for parties, and I've been to a few. It's a way for the whole community to unwind and relax. When Friday hits the usual question is: "So, what's going on tonight and tomorrow?"

Well, when I cleaned out the studio space my first thought was that it would be a great thing to have a party in there. Specifically: a wine and cheese party, with two huge paintings on either side of the room.

So that is pretty much what I did.

6 bottles of wine (ratio of 5 red to 1 white, of course), 5 different types of cheeses, some crackers, olive tapenade, sweet peppers, a huge knife that I found in the studio that ended up being the cheese knife, and one data projector later, I did "my turn" and gave back to the community. Here are the recordings of such (thanks to Alfonso, since these are his pictures: www.alfonsoelia.com )





Paint Splatters on the floor.



Peter contemplates the second painting.



Cheeses.







Signatures.



I have pictures of the new paintings as well. I'll be putting them up here soon. But in this shot you can get a bit of a look at the second one.



Shadow people.

Website in 5 days (or, my brain hurts)

Whew—what a weekend.

After working with Concrete5 for a few days I realized that the design I wanted to produce for Proteus Creative was much more ambitious than my skillset within the new CMS could provide—at least, within the timeframe I wanted the site to be in existence (i.e. yesterday). So I did something I rarely do—I set up a compromise, or a preview site.

Head over and take a look: www.proteuscreative.com

Internet Explorer users beware! I've only tested it in the Macintosh browsers so far. Though comments and critiques are welcome if you spot something that doesn't seem to work right.

It's designed to be a halfway point between a splash page and the whole site that I have planned. Basically, it's enough to let clients know I exist and show them the best of what I do. It should be enough to get a few freelance gigs here and there.

Though the design is simple, it is running on a full Concrete5 system, with a few modified javascript/php blocks I've implemented. Some of them took a little twisting, but it all seems to work the way I want it to (again, at least in Mac Safari and Firefox).

From design concept to finished upload, the whole thing took about five days—most of it being done on the weekend. Today and yesterday were a blur, as I head my head fully… well, stuck in concrete.

But now it's there, and I've already learned a lot. Now at least this can bide me some time to actually sharpen my skills and work towards implementing the big fish.

Enjoy!