A catalogue of art projects born at Burning Man
Srikanth Guttikonda
Sirsasana is a playful, welcoming 30 foot tall installation of a tree-like sculpture doing a headstand. Its tree roots reach for the sky, and its trunk is composed of interwoven wooden arcs based on the golden ratio that form a hyperboloid. Interactive lighting and soundscape brings the tree to life at night to display the pulsing, breathing flow of life force from roots to leaves as one would experience doing a headstand.
Burned
2022
Josh Zubkoff
39.17583312207749, -122.97932966300372
A collaboration with Soma Holiday, Ladybug is an interactive sculpture where standing participants use arcade buttons and joysticks to control a mesmerizing array of addressable LEDs to change the patterns for those viewing below.
United States
2022
Christina Sporrong
38.48248513967245, -9.015706839665508
The Flybrary is a 40-foot large steel head with book-like birds flying out of the top. The expression on the face is one of contemplation. The face itself is nonbinary and is a mixture of all races, colors, and creeds. The birds represent our thoughts, the eyes thoughtfully looking up towards them.
The interior space of the Flybrary can be opened to the public and has acted as a fantastical library within a head. It has a counter space, several catwalks, neural inspired chandeliers and reading books and bookshelves. It has its own curated library filled with books relating to free thought, new ideas, political theory, the environment, flight, classics, and esoteric books.
In a time where actions can be so limited by circumstances beyond our control, we must harvest our power within, our ability to think, learn and discover new ways of seeing that what surrounds us. We must know our history so we can invent better ways to be in the world.
During the Burning Man Festival in 2019, The Flybrary hosted the Human Library Project, an organization from Denmark. The Human Library Project creates a safe space for dialogue where topics are discussed openly between human books and their readers.
Every day during the event, the public could check out a human book and spend some time questioning their own stereotypes and judgement after listening to their book.
Portugal
2019
Benjamin Langholz
Stone 27 invites you on a walk along floating stones above the ground to experience a moment of complete presence. The installation is made up of 27 floating stones each weighing 600 pounds. The stones form a circular pathway increasing in height up to 20 feet above the ground below. The artist employed industrial materials, and the brains of two structural engineers, so that the installation could stand supported by four minimal steel columns anchored to the ground without the use of foundation (required by the temporary nature of the event). Stone 27 is fully interactive and has been climbed by thousands of people.
2019
Josh Zubkoff
Originally built with the help of over a hundred volunteers, Rainbow Bridge is over 17,000lbs of steel, 25,000 LEDs, and 96 stairs.
2018
Matt Schultz
39.52549983240025, -119.81247089513141
The Space Whale is a full scale stained glass humpback whale mother and calf. A monumental testament to family, our relationships with nature, time and space and our responsibility to preserve our environment. Originally appearing as the Keyhole project at Burning Man 2016, The Space Whale now lives in front of City Hall in Reno, NV. Our team is excited to create more whales and share them with the world.
United States
2016
Matt Schultz
Embrace is likely Schultz’s most notable artwork. A 180,000 lb, 7 story monument to the relationships of our lives. Taking nearly a year to build and a 104 person volunteer team to erect it became the artwork that defined Burning Man 2014. It was a temple to the people who have inspired our lives.
Burned
2014
Marco Cochrane
36.103429630868696, -115.17573852173942
“Follow your bliss and doors will open where none existed"
The first sculpture in The Bliss Project series by Marco Cochrane of a woman, Deja Solis, expressing her humanity, Bliss Dance, debuted at Burning Man in 2010 and was located on Treasure Island in San Francisco from May 2011-2015. Bliss Dance has recently found a new and permanent home at The Park on the Las Vegas Strip. These sculptures are intended to demand a change in perspective… to be catalysts for social change. They are intended to challenge the viewer to see past the sexual charge that has developed around the female body to the human being. They are intended to de-objectify women and inspire men and women to take action to end violence against women, thus allowing both women and men to live fully and thrive. Forty feet tall, Bliss Dance depicts a woman dancing, eyes closed, expressing her joy, her energy, herself… even though it may not be safe to do so. She is brave, strong, powerful, riveting.
A marriage of classical sculptural technique and modern design, artist Marco Cochrane and his crew constructed Bliss Dance out of steel rod and tubing utilizing two layers of geodesic triangles, covered by a skin of stainless steel mesh and lit from both inside and outside by 2,828 individual RGB LED lights (new for The Park, Lighting Program by Ka-Ping Yee). Held together by 55,000 welds and supported by six, 2.5 inch solid steel rods in the weight-bearing ankle, Bliss Dance is a manifestation of the artist’s goal to marry the masculine feel of triangles, trusses and steel, with the feminine form and spirit.
To create Bliss Dance, Marco sculpted model Deja Solis in clay, then used a Pantograph – a medieval-era enlargement tool- to make a hand built enlargement, 14 ft. 6 in. tall. The sculpture was then again enlarged using the Pantograph to her final 40-foot form.
United States
2010