Community Art Makers

Making the Fire of Fires from Ira Weinschel on Vimeo.

This video is assembled from hundreds of still photos I took during the building of “The Fire of Fires”, the Temple at Burning Man 2009. It includes shots from fundraisers in Austin and Houston, our build in Austin, TX during one of the hottest summers on record and the month we spent putting it all together on-playa.

Special thanks to The Mermen for allowing the use of their music in this video. Please visit them at http://www.mermen.net

We’ve been accepted to Maker’s Market, it’s Make Magazine’s curated online marketplace. We are working to pay down the debt from the Burning Man Temple project by making many of the designs featured in the temple into wonderful artwork you can own.

We also recently traded one of our ShopBots in for a shiny new laser cutter! Since then we have designed over thirty styles of lanterns, all based on last year’s temple panels. We will be making new things all the time, so check back often. If you have a favorite design from the temple, let us know and we can make something just for you. Let us know in an email if you have a specific request or an idea for a new thing you want to see. Email to dave at community art makers dot com.

Thanks for your continuing support, it means a lot to us. If you’d like to simply donate, the button on the left will do. If you’d like to support us by buying some lighting or artwork, hit up the Maker’s Market.

The Austin American Statesman (great pictures on the top left) and The Texas Observer have published some wonderful articles about our Temple!

Temple at dawn

These are the people who gave up their summer to cut wood into piles, to bathe in a rich mix of dust and wood glue and to sand like they’ve never sanded before. They made small piles into big piles and back again, sometimes twice before dinner. This is the little crew from Texas that grew into a big crew from All Over the Place. This is the crew that roared.

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All Photos © 2009 Ira Weinschel

Many of us gathered on the top floor of the Temple to watch the Man burn on Saturday night & I tried to get quick portraits of as many crew members as I could. Unfortunately, quite a few of the crew were elsewhere so this collection is regrettably incomplete.

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All Photos © 2009 Ira Weinschel

These photos were all taken after the Temple was opened to the public. Except for a few photos from burn night, this is probably the last batch of photos I’ll post of the Temple itself. Two of these shots are repeats from a previous post but I wanted to include them here to complete “the set”.

Still to come: crew photos!

All Photos © 2009 Ira Weinschel

I’ve finally gone thru all the photos and pulled out a few more shots from the construction phase. These were mostly taken in the last 5 days before we opened the Temple to the public, although there are a few older shots that I neglected to post in earlier updates.

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All Photos © 2009 Ira Weinschel

Inspired by some of Ryan Hayes’ work, I decided to try a few 360 degree panoramic shots during the Temple build. The shots for this first one were taken our second day on the playa with my tripod set up over the surveyor’s flag marking the center of the Temple. They really illustrate how empty the playa was when we first got there! Work on the “man base” had just begun and I think most of the DPW volunteers were still staying in Gerlach at night.

This post is gonna be brief–I’m in a hotel in Reno (the Silver Legacy if anyone’s hanging out in the area tonight . . . ) and honestly, I’m too exhausted to put together a coherent sentence right now. We completed the Temple and opened it to the public Tuesday night–the outpouring of gratitude from the Temple visitors was truly amazing.

With exhausted bodies and heavy hearts, we bid farewell to the Temple Sunday night in a glorious burst of fire. A few photos are included here; I’ll post more later once I get back to Austin.

All Photos © 2009 Ira Weinschel

After 3 months of non-stop effort, we’re officially down to the wire. Our deadline is Sunday at midnight and we’re working like crazy to get everything finished on time. We’re pretty much on schedule but it’s gonna be tight. Fortunately, we’re getting a lot of extra help from the DPW crew–despite their gruff reputation they’ve been beyond awesome, putting in full days at their DPW tasks and then coming over to help us out in their “off time”. The Temple crew is truly grateful to the DPW Heavy Machinery team and the DPW general staff. Y’all are the best!

We’re finishing up the ramps that lead into the Temple today and then we start on the last major task–moving the giant “ribs” into place. The longest of them are 30 feet long and they won’t be truly stable until they’re all in place so it’s going to be quite a task for the heavy equipment crew that will be craning them into place.

Finally, the fire tornado is complete except for some last minute tweaks. We did a test fire yesterday with just one of the three flame jets and it was pretty spectacular–a thin stream of fire that shot all the way to the top of the 30-foot enclosure. Everyone who saw it was in awe at what the tornado crew (aka Team Dorothy) has managed to pull off. We’re all optimistic and anxiously waiting to see the finished product.

Thanks again for all of your kind comments and support!

All Photos © 2009 Ira Weinschel