All Souls Procession 2008

A couple of weeks ago we participated in the 17th annual All Souls Procession in Tucson, Arizona. This amazing event attracts over 10,000 people in costume for a procession to honor the dead. It is held on the streets of downtown Tucson beginning at dusk. The procession route winds through downtown for about two miles. Thousands of people participate in the procession and thousands more line the streets to watch, many of them in costume, too.

We dressed up like fluorescent moths and brought the Seussian Pedal Tractor down for the event. The pedal tractor had blacklights mounted on it so we could all glow by flocking around it. The tractor performed well although, when we went through a tunnel under a road, we needed people to hang onto the back to slow it down. It's brakes don't work very well at all. In the photo you can see Nita walking at left, Robert and myself pedaling in the back of the tractor and Shelley pedaling and steering up front. I snagged this photo off the web. I don't know who took it.

The procession finishes at an area of loading docks where a performance by Flam Chen ensued. They had two huge cranes hoist performers 80 or 90 feet up in the air. The culmination of the event is the burning of the Urn. The Urn represents the dead and the burning of it represents a release of their spirits. There was music and smoke and fire and EVERYTHING! It was great!

This is one of my favorite events, mostly because it is so inclusive and participatory. Not only do people dress up to be in the procession, they also dress up to watch the procession. We burners love to dress up and play together so this is another fun opportunity to get together. There were a lot of spectacular costumes to see. You can see our friends, Betsy and Kristin, in costume at right.

This was our third year participating in the All Souls Procession. We love it!

Thanks to Clint and Janabanana for the photos.

Arcosanti - Behind the Scenes

A group of us went on a drive in the Cadwac yesterday. Destination: Arcosanti. This is an experimental urban design project started in 1970 by Italian architect Paolo Soleri. Soleri is a visionary architect. He has designed entire cities (none of them built) with the idea to concentrate human activities in massive structures which would provide more area for nature and agriculture.

Arcosanti currently takes up about 10 acres of an 860 acre site in the high desert of central Arizona. The plan was to build a concentrated urban community as an alternative to suburban sprawl. When complete, Arcosanti is supposed to house 3000 to 5000 residents. It's only about 5 percent complete and progress has slowed to a crawl in recent years due to lack of funding. Arcosanti manages to maintain itself at a minimal level by offering tours, selling ceramic and bronze bells, and hosting performance events. They also hold regular five-week intensive Arcology workshops where you get to live and work at the site while learning. Arcology is a word Soleri made up to describe the merging of architecture and ecology.

Thanks to our friend, Cabiria, we got a special tour of the back sides of the buildings, the insides of storage rooms, construction zones, and behind the scenes at the amphitheater. Maggie, another resident, gave us a special agricultural tour of the greenhouses, gardens, fields, chicken coops, and the funky experimental structures built over the years by the residents. We had a picnic down in camp and were joined by many of the residents who weren't working. The weather was beautiful and we had a wonderful and relaxing visit to a unique and interesting place.



There are several residents who live in the completed structures as well as in an area called "camp" down below the main site. Camp is an earthy, more organically grown area that was where everyone lived when building began on the bluff up above. Camp has fields, gardens, greenhouses, and various cubical residences made out of concrete slabs. There are also some nice indoor and outdoor gathering spaces.

Soleri's designs are sculpturally beautiful and the concept of combining ecology and architecture is a great idea. One of the potential problems I see is that there are a lot of people, maybe most people, who would not enjoy living in identical housing units crammed tightly together in huge multi-story structures. I believe human desires for intimate contact with nature, personal control over the appearance of their dwellings, and the desire for privacy and outdoor living spaces need more consideration when designing residential structures. For example, the feeling in "camp" is more vital and human than the feeling in the structures of Arcosanti which have a commercial feel to them.

Soleri is 89 years old. Who knows what will happen to the place when he is gone. It would be nice if it could be opened up for more creative participation and attract the funding needed to complete it in some form. For now, we will enjoy visiting an interesting place and fun people.

See more photos of our visit.

Further Adventures in East Jesus

I just got back from a three-day re-visit to East Jesus. East Jesus is a "suburb" of Slab City. Charlie Russell is the mayor of East Jesus - population: 1. He is building a live-in found-object art installation there and has made a lot of progress since I last visited about a year and a half ago. It's about five or six times as big. The sculpture garden has been expanded and it's getting more interesting all the time. I wanted to take a bunch of pictures and post them on the web but, unfortunately, my camera's battery was totally dead and I didn't bring the charger with me. oops!
You can, however, see a 15-minute video I made of my earlier visit called Adventures in East Jesus. I plan to visit again sometime in the next two or three months and I will make sure my camera is charged up and ready to go.

Below is a quote from Rabelais that Charlie has on his East Jesus web page. It's indicative of the spirit and philosophy that has informed and driven zone trippers and anarchical thinkers for centuries.

"All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed, Do What Thou Wilt; because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us." -- François Rabelais,Gargantua and Pantagruel (16th C.)

"Be The Man" Burns

The "Be The Man" sculpture/structure is now just a tiny pile of ashes. The structure was assembled at Gateway Ranch on Friday in about four hours. it went very smoothly. Janabanana made a mask that people could put on when they climbed the tower. That way they could be The Man in Burning Man style.

The fire took a long time to catch hold. Thanks to Gary for tossing more fuel on the fire to get it going properly. In spite of the slow start I thought it burned beautifully. It's amazing how such a large structure could burn down into such a small pile of ashes. You could almost put all of it into a five gallon bucket.

See more photos of the whole process, from drawings to glowing embers.


The whole decompression weekend was a lot of fun. Lot's of dancing, laughing and hugging. We had a great time, even though it rained on Saturday afternoon. I am guessing about a hundred people attended.

"Be The Man" Work Party Success

After what seemed like a fruitless search for used lumber, I finally found someone who had a big pile of 2x4's laying around in his yard. It was more wood than we needed for the project but the deal was too good to pass up. There were about 60 boards, almost all of them over 16 feet long. Some of them were redwood and most of them were in pretty good shape. I got the wood just in time for our first work party.

The mission was to build at least half of the structural sections of the sculpture. We did way better than that. We were able to get all of the structural sections completed for the Be The Man sculpture and we had time to start making decorative bits, too!

There were several people helping. When Joey showed up with the nail guns, the pace really picked up. Yay for nail guns! Thanks to Cat Herder, Tom, Pete, Ray, Joey, Pam, A.T., Crispy, Ashley, and Lindsey for helping put it all together. All we need to do now is make more burnable decorations and then assemble it at Decompression in two weeks.

Be The Man - A Burnable Art Project

Be The Man will be a small decorated wooden building I designed that is both a tiny temple and a tower that you can climb. It will be about 17 feet tall and is 8-feet square at its base. It will be on display at the Arizona Decompression - an after-party of sorts for Arizonans who have gone to the Burning Man Festival.

The sculpture is collaborative. People are invited to participate in building it and designing and making the burnable decorations that go on it. When it's assembled at Decompression, participants can climb to the top of the tower and Be the Man! That is to say, they can imitate the Burning Man figure in miniature.

It will only be standing for about a day and a half. At the culmination of the Decompression event we will put a wooden figure on top and the whole structure will be lit on fire and burned to the ground while the crowd cheers. It's a testimony to beauty, spontaneity, and the temporariness of all things.

Many Arizona burners have contributed to make this happen. The more people that get involved, the more fun the whole process will be. Thanks to all who helped and who will help. It's all happening fast. Decompression is less than three weeks away!

The Prescott Valley Kinetic Sculpture Race

Yesterday we entered the Seussian Pedal Tractor in the third annual Prescott Valley Kinetic Sculpture race. There were 10 entries, up from last year's 7 or 8 entries. There was also a much larger crowd of spectators than before. It's good to see the event growing. We need more wacky events. It's too much fun!

The Seussian Pedal Tractor performed flawlessly, piloted by Janabanana, A.T. and Cat Herder. Halfway through the race, I traded places with Cat Herder and rode the tractor to the finish. The only spot we couldn't get through without help was the mud bog. We needed a push from three or four people to get up the steep edge of the mud pit.

We finished dead last. This was by design actually. We wanted a leisurely ride. Why work hard? We rode the whole course, did not take any shortcuts, and had a great time. After all, kinetic sculpture racing is not about speed. It's about fun!

We won three trophies! That's three times as many as any other entry. We got trophies for The Most Artistic, The Craziest, and Racers' Choice. Two of the trophies were made by metal sculptor Rick Hartner. The other sculpture was made by my lovely wife, Nita, who also was a race judge (Judge Mental) Not only do we feel exceptionally honored to win the trophies, it's a special treat to have the trophies be sculptures by respected sculptors.

Special thanks to the following people:

Cynthia Jones for creating and managing this fun event.
Judge Mental and all the other judges for graciously accepting our bribes.
Janabanana, A.T. and Cat Herder for piloting the Pedal Tractor.
Ken and Nils for being our pit crew and helping us out of tricky spots in the race.
All our friends who came from far and wide to cheer us on.

After the race we spent the afternoon at Prescott Valley's World Arts Festival. We laid out a blanket at the back of one of the big performance tent and watched the musical performances. Between performances A.T. brought out her hula hoops and we entertained spectators and ourselves while still dressed in our racing outfits - tutus and striped tights.

Click the arrow in the middle of the picture below to see a short slide show.

Click here to see larger versions of the photos in this slide show.