For example...

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You will recall that last Monday I blogged about finding inspiration for your art in nature, in other artists’ work, anywhere: you have to allow yourself to hear your brain go, “Oooh, you know what we could do??”

Most of us rather sensibly ignore all those impulses, but I think we as the people who MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT are better off if we at least jot those ideas down. And every now and then I think it’s better to follow those ideas to glory.

Here’s my most recent inspiration. I will say up front that this project has seized my attention in ways that nothing else has in recent memory. The fact that it’s an art project for Alchemy, the Georgia burn, which may not even happen this October, is completely irrelevant.

One of the emails to which I subscribe lists funky resources, and one of them led me to this book:

It’s chock full of cool things to do and try, and one of the photos — like Nadav Kander’s photo from last week — triggered something in my brain.

Here’s the photo:

tinkering-inspiration.jpg


The artist is Barry Underwood, a photographer. I was immediately intrigued and excited: wouldn’t something like this look cool at the burn? The idea formed itself almost completely in my head in an instant—a 100-ft long “milky way” of rings, through which the hippies could wend their way!

I was disappointed when, in the next couple pages, it turned out that the rings were glowsticks, which tend to be problematic at a burn since they so easily turn into moop. Not to mention the sheer wastefulness of that many glowsticks having to be discarded every night…

That’s okay: Underwood is a photographer, not a sculptor, so I just had to come up with another way to do it, and that way was clearly electroluminescent wire (EL wire), beloved of burners everywhere.

I whipped out a blank notebook and scribbled a vision statement:

VISION STATEMENT

[NAME OF PROJECT] will be a light installation for Alchemy, the Georgia burn.

  • [NAME OF PROJECT] will consist of rings of EL wire, ranging from ≈8”–18” in diameter.

  • [NAME OF PROJECT] will stretch some 50–100’ through the center of “Lake Ruby,” the central field of Alchemy, so called because of its tendency to flood after heavy rains.

  • The rings will be elevated ≈8” off the ground so that even if Lake Ruby floods, the rings will not be submerged. (In fact, the reflection would be an even more stunning effect.)

  • The layout of [NAME OF PROJECT] will allow the hippies to wander though the installation ina a variety of patterns and approaches.

  • The overall effect of [NAME OF PROJECT] will be that of a galaxy, a field of stellar objects.

And just like that, I’ve got what in the the burn world we call a “hippie trap.”

Follow along as I work my way through this project.