Category: Art news

Time To Talk Flipside 2018

Our artistic participation is often driven by the theme that was selected the September before the event. Maybe we choose costumes inspired by the theme, or worked on a project influenced by it. Theme camp events and décor are often driven by the theme. For many people, the event’s theme is a central focal point. Even the effigy design is based off of the theme. So, where does this theme come from? Our theme selection process is as old as the event itself…

The First Regional Event

In 1998, Burning Man Texas became the first Burning Man regional event. Originally created in order to help support the Burning Man event during a financial crisis, Burning Man Texas quickly took on a life of its own and Burning Flipside was born. In the past 20 years, many regionals have sprung up across the state, the nation, and the globe. Each event is different and each event is special. One of the unique features of Burning Flipside is the way that the event theme selection is addressed. Unlike many other events, the “Nevada Regional” included, where a board or committee carefully selects the theme, the theme for each year’s Flipside is voted on by the community during Fall Town Hall.

Being Part of the Magic

How does the community get to participate? During Fall Town Hall, people pitch themes and the community votes. Anyone can suggest a theme- if you feel strongly about a theme, presenting the theme on site and pushing the theme online prior to the event is helpful. You are encouraged to sign in to the secure part of the Burning Flipside website and register your theme proposal. Being that we tend to be a community that values shenanigans and the ridiculous, the voting process is often chaotic. You may notice people try to vote multiple times, with varying degrees of success. “Bribery” is not unusual. Embracing the mayhem and silliness is not a bad idea. Eventually, maybe halfway through Town Hall, the votes are tallied by the AAR, LLC and the winning theme is announced.

What Makes a Good Theme?

Who am I, or you, to judge? Every theme has wild supporters and rabid detractors and that’s okay. Check out the themes we’ve had in the past and think about what sings to your soul. If the theme means anything to you, be involved.

Is The Theme Important?

That’s up to the individual. You may hate the theme that was voted in, choose to ignore it, and still have all the fun anyway. You may love the theme, base all your plans around it, and still have all the fun anyway. It’s up to you. If you hated last year’s theme, present something “better.” Get a group together, be silly, have fun, help make the magic happen. For many, the theme is very important and the process of community participation is cherished.

How To Be Involved

Fall Town Hall is held at the warehouse every September. The 2017 Fall Town Hall will be held on September, 23^rd. Tailgating starts at 12:30, the meeting starts at 2:34pm. Whether you’re there to present, to vote, to get event updates, to see our people, your presence is appreciated and encouraged. And don’t forget to have fun!

Working and interacting with other artists is a great way to get motivated to make more art. It’s easy to find ourselves in a slump when we’re on our own.  Need a little kick in the pants, a little inspiration? We’re here to help. The Pyropolis Art Guild is hosting Art Nights At Lloyd to give our varied art community a night to come create together.

 Regular Art Nights will be held in the air-conditioned meeting room, so plan your projects for that space (unless there’s a specific class/workshop/art focus, keep this in mind in case you were wanting to bring a project that requires lots of noise, smells or mess).

 Some nights will be focused, with life drawing, workshops, speakers, etc. Many more will be a gathering to paint, weld, make blinky light projects, crochet, collaborate with other artists and much more. Let your imagination be your guide.

 We’d like to stay focused on art and leave social connecting for Church Nights, so please bring a project or find one when you arrive. Let’s make some amazing!

Art Nights At Lloyd

3106 Industrial Terrace, Austin, TX 78758

Launch: June 15 2017

7pm-10pm

(Currently scheduled for every other Thursday- check the Facebook group for updates)

**As with all things Lloyd, this is a Leave No Trace Event**

What To Bring:

Bring Your Own Art and Supplies

(or find out what is available onsite to work on- please get in touch with a host)

Pyropolis Art Guild:

Was created in order to help the artists in our community mutually support one another by sharing past, present and future art related projects, as well as encourage success through learning together and from each other. To learn more and to join the Pyropolis Art Guild, find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1344728312220948/

Image: Tom Etheridge by Bean Noneya

Is there anything you want the Flipside Community to understand about your piece?

 –When we were kids most of us recall a time period where, perhaps we’d go to the park and we’d see all these other kids playing and we could just run up to them and start playing too. No questions asked. You were just accepted. At some point in adolescence, the differences in our backgrounds start creating these divides between us. You start noticing where you belong (and where you don’t belong). At some point, you learned that it’s suddenly become weird to go up to a stranger and say, “Hey, will you be my friend?”. By the time you’re an adult, it’s so hard to make a new friend. It is for me anyway. The thing that’s amazing about the stars is they bring out that inner child in every single person who receives them. These stars are not only gifted in masses at festivals, but to people I meet in day-to-day life.

 -What inspired it?

A friend kind of twisted my arm always trying to get me into glass art. I was really busy and not that interested until one day she brought it up again and I thought maybe it would be cool to make a glass star. As a person who is both artistically and mathematically minded, I am an incredibly obsessive perfectionist. I hate looking at my paintings because all I see is their flaws. I double-triple check all my work in fear of ever being wrong. I may be the most “worryingest” girl you will ever meet, I worry about everything and am so self-critical. Sometimes I’m surprised I have any friends at all, I’m probably such a drag to be around. The stars were different. I loved looking at them. I became really obsessive, making star after star after star. Before long I had hundreds of these little glass stars and I just loved picking them up in handfuls and admiring each of them again and again. However, I was accumulating hundreds of stars and I kind of didn’t know what to do with them, so I just sort of started giving them to people. Of course, I considered selling them at first, people offered to buy them, and still continue to, but I never sold one. Thank god. I’m so glad I can say I never sold one because I think that’s one of the things that I think keeps them “pure”. In this society where so much is about ego and money, I’m thankful to keep the stars separate. So, I just continued to give them to people and hopefully, I’ll continue to be in a position to keep giving them for as long as I live, because I think they are really special. The whole project has been kind of a god-send since I’m so shy and apparently such a difficult person to get to know. Small talk is really hard for me. People think I’m weird (and not in a cool way), but now I get a pass on that. When I sit next to someone on an airplane, I get to skip that awkward period where they are acknowledging you, but you don’t really know if they want to actually engage with you. It always bothered me, that the universe may have distributed that person to sit next to me on this plane for a reason, but I’m just reading my book. Now I have a solution, I just pull out a bag of stars and say, “Hey, look, I have a bag of stars and I give them away to people for free, which one do you want?”. Whoever sees them turns into that little kid on the playground. EVERYONE loves looking at, and picking out a star. It doesn’t matter who they are. I have seen the most tired business men, all stuffy looking in their suits turn into beaming little boys so happy to get to be playing with stars on a plane. They are so thrilled to be able to take something home to their kids who miss them because they travel so much. It’s the best.

 -Any funny stories or challenges in the creation?

 I’ve gifted thousands of stars now for years. I’ve gifted them to homeless people, kids in hospitals, neighbors, people who just got out of prison, astronauts, rich people, poor people, blind people, waiters and waitresses, the tow truck driver, my cat’s vet… sometimes I even leave batches in random people’s porches. One story that has always made an impression on me, was I was at this music venue that was run by a group of felons, people who had clearly had rough lives, been to prison, and were trying to make a new path for themselves in life with running this business. A bunch of college students were celebrating their recent graduation from a very prestigious university at this venue. I happened to be at this place with an unusually large bath of stars so I busted them out all over a table and everyone swarmed around. The observation I made was that I noticed that the newly college graduates would look at a star and say, “THAT is the one I want. THAT is the star for me” and they would take it with confidence and be really enthusiastic about it. The people who had been in prison, that ran the venue, hesitated. When they saw a star they liked, they said “I really like this star but I don’t want to take the best one”, and I had to assure them that they really could have whatever star they wanted, that all these stars were going to strangers and yet they continued to behave as though they didn’t feel like they should take the star they liked the most.

 -Anything you want to say about yourself/the creative force about the piece?

I’m really boring to actually talk to when you get past the stars.

My string art was inspired by trying to come up with an interesting and fun interactive art form by using a recycled trampoline.  We have brought it to Flipside four years in a row and every year it takes on new and exciting shapes and colors . This ever changing art piece is lots of fun for whom ever wants to partake. It’s truly simple –  just pick up some yarn, loop it around the frame, and throw it to a friend on the opposite side, loop it again around frame and throw it again.  Make a dream catcher or spell your name the possibilities are endless. This year we added dancing lights and music.  But most of all have fun. 

Amidst all the wonderful, creative swirl of Flipside, the Island is set back a few paces from the chaos.  

Just over a bridge, on the way to one of the most well-used beaches, this year the Island is being set up to exhibit some of our citizens smaller and mid-sized art. Power and lighting will make this a night time destination, as well as a chill spot to spent time during the day. So…

                      The Island Wants Your Art!!! 

Do you have some small to mid-sized art you’d like to share with your fellow Flipizens? Requirements are minimal: it needs to be somewhat weather resistant, and fit under a tree canopy of roughly 10′. If it is Really small, we will work to find a way to secure it to one of the display stands (read “stumps of various sizes and heights”) we have on site. If you have a piece, or pieces, of art you would be willing to share with Flipside, please contact JadeRumour, Island Lead, at islandhost17@burningflipside.com  We have some wonderful submissions already headed that way, but could use 5 to 8 more, depending on size. 

Whatchagot?! 

Burning Art: Flipside 2017

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural edition of Ste. Michelle Judges Your Art.  In this series, Ste. Michelle plans to judge your art by assessing its ability to burn and how spectacular it will be to witness its burning destruction.  A necessary caveat:  Don’t Burn Other People’s Art, no matter how cool I make it sound.  

I’ve got a lot of art to judge before Flipside, and I may need to postpone some of it to after the event, but I literally just thought of this idea, so that’s my own fault for not thinking of it sooner.

Community Masterpiece

A blank canvas for the community to create a masterpiece (or just paint and have fun).

The artist for this art describes it as “A 5X8 blank canvas(es) with paint supplies open to the community to express themselves day or night.”   This one is interesting, as it doesn’t provide enough detail of the materials to properly assess it.  So I’ll guess.  According to Google, canvases are typically cotton or linen stretched across a wooden frame.  Although, at this size, that would be pretty costly, so there’s a good chance this is not a stretched canvas.  This is where I have to split into two factions: Team Paper and Team Canvas.

Team Paper

Team paper means the canvas will be some sort of large paper canvas, like we used in grade school for our water colors.  This version is super simple to light on fire, a single match, a lighter or even a lit cigarette could ignite a paper canvas.  No amount of paint will make a difference, even soaking wet, paper will ignite.  Any structure that is supporting the paper will be harder; a wooden frame probably won’t ignite if just the paper is lit.  But with a little kindling or sustained exposure to a fire source, a wood frame will ignite, relatively easily.

The fire would be fast, the paper would light and burn up completely in a minute if it’s lit in the middle.  The first few seconds would be fun to watch the flame spread, but fairly quickly it would be over, except for the embers which would be light and float off.  A night time burn would allow them to appear pretty as they float away.  The frame would be slower, but it would like flame up and collapse fairly quickly.  It may even get extinguished before it’s completely burned if the ground is wet.

Ease of Burn:  Very Very Easy

Quality of Burn: Short and kind of dull.

Team Canvas

Thick woven cotton and linen are much harder to catch fire than paper.  They will eventually burn when exposed to normal flame (like a lighter), but will burn slowly and without much excitement.  (I suppose if you put the canvas on top of an already lit fire (really hot) and it would be a little exciting if it got caught in an updraft and the flaming canvas flew out over a crowd, but you’d really have to work on that and it would require more infrastructure than is planned.)  The frame would be dried softwood, so it would burn fairly quickly (maybe faster than the canvas if it wasn’t wrapped in canvas to start with.)  A slow steady burn with a small collapse and minimal flames.

Ease of Burn: Very Easy

Quality of Burn:  Not long and kind of dull.

Regardless of its makeup, this art is probably more interesting not on fire.  

Freefall Simulation

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

The Freefall Simulation is a giant gyroscope with a VR headset and a bunch of fans that will make you feel like you are plummeting towards earth from very high up.  Which sounds pretty neat.  But I need to know:  Would it burn?  

Once again they didn’t list their components, but I’m going to guess that the gyroscope device is steel and/or stainless steel, the fan is one of those big ass metal fans, and the electronics are plastic, PVC or polyethylene coated copper or aluminum, silicon circuitry and steel cases.

When presented with flame, and it will take a lot of flame, the first to go up will be those tiny cables and the plastic VR frames.  If there’s any glass in there, I’d expect it to crack and fall under the flames pretty quickly.  After that comes the gyroscope.  If there are any lubricants to make it move smoothly, those will burn off fairly quickly (and smell awful), but the steel itself will take a lot more that your average flame thrower.  My research indicates that steel wool will ignite with just a lighter, and all of the other sites that discuss igniting steel involve 9/11 conspiracies, and I’m not getting put on that list anytime soon, so I’m just gonna make some wild assumptions based on my understanding of physics I learned by watching movies and studying medieval metallurgy (aka watching the history channel).

Steel is hard to ignite, but it can melt if you have gallows and plenty of combustible material to heat it.  So if you yanked the fans out of from under the gyroscope, replaced it with a bunch of hardwood lit that wood and the used the fans to force air into the fire, you could melt the whole thing in place.  Though you might need a way to encompass the heat of the fire.

Perhaps if you were to toss some thermite in there, that would speed things up a bit.

Ease of Burn: Very Very Hard

Quality of Burn: Initially interesting and smelly, overall a grueling dull process with little to show.  Unless you use thermite.  

It really seems like it would be more interesting to play in, and not light on fire.

Imagine you’re skipping merrily down a path at Flipside. It’s a lovely clear evening and you are making your way back to your camp to get ready for the night’s affairs, when suddenly, you see something off in the woods. It may be a mysterious light, a particular intriguing sound, a tall figure, or…giggling? You creep closer to the installation.  What is it? What was the artist thinking about? Is there a particular message? Also, who is the badass that built it?

Leading up to Flipside 2017, we’ll be having an Art Spotlight, focused on the art pieces that your community members will be bringing to the event.  This is a chance for you to get a preview of the pieces, to get excited about seeing them in person, and also to celebrate the person(s) who put their sweat and time and creative brain into making such a thing for our community to enjoy. Self-expression is one of the main arteries of our event. It’s time to focus on the art!

Art Spotlight #1 : The Ectoplasmic Stargon Rainbow Generator (ESRG)

-Is there anything you want the Flipside community to know or understand about your piece? 

 This year’s art is a spin on past years pieces.  ESRG starts with all the basic pieces including my favorites PVC, Bungee, ZipTies, Rope, 80lb test line, spray paint and did I mention PVC.  After breaking out more power this year for even more light, ESRG will illuminate the night and brighten the spirit in all of us.

-What inspired it?

Just being mesmerized by pretty lights and spinny things.  A fun theme this year adds a little more spice. 

-Any funny stories or challenges in the creation?

As with previous years this years art starts off in November in my back yard.  Being rather large it draws many lookers from the community.  I guess where I live in Marble Falls I’m getting to be known as an official nut job. 

I feel unbelievably honored to be able to exhibit this art piece to the many many people who make Flipside possible and the wonderful participants that make it real.  It is a great pleasure to be involved in a 1 week event that lasts literally the entire year.

Meet Sven

Sven and I have been together for over two years.  We’ve been to Flipside together twice and really enjoyed our time together there.  But.  Sven doesn’t camp with me.  Because, Sven is a car.  And cars camp in parking, not in the city.

Sven’s job is to get me there safely and while some other cars will get dressed up for the event, Sven is demure, and doesn’t like costumes.  Sven is no mutant vehicle.  So Sven spends the event with the other cars not dressed for the event, in parking.  He tells me that he has fun in parking, and enjoys the companionship of the other cars (Sven spends a lot of time at home alone with my junk in the garage).  

If there ever comes a time where I need Sven to camp in at Flipside, I know that he will appreciate being off the road, and covered.  Maybe even in something decorative.  Because, although Sven is shy and reserved, he knows that we are in this together and he will take one for Pyropolis and wear a costume, for me.  For us.

Because this city we build is not like other cities, where all the cars hangout in front of the houses.  This city is for people.  It’s for art.  It’s for the Flipiziens.  It’s for leaving the real world for something better.  There’s just not enough room for shy and reserved cars in our city, when we want to fill it with awesome.

Cars camp in Parking.  People camp in Pyropolis.  

-Ste. Michelle

(Need more info? Of course you do- go read your survival guide)