Our 2013 Burning Man Story

While our crew attends several festivals throughout the year, we hold a special place in our hearts for Burning Man.  No other event erases the line between art and community so completely, making it a perfect place for our work.  Like the world in a grain of – well – dust, Burning Man 2013 passed by in a poignant flash, yet left us with countless memories to reflect on.  We’re happy to share a few of them with you here.

We set out for Burning Man early on Sunday with the biggest build crew we’ve ever had.  Our timing probably couldn’t have been worse – the traffic heading into the desert was terrible, and we ended up stopped on the road for hours.  We made the best of it we could, brushing our teeth, dancing in front of the headlights, and singing songs with other burners. 

When we finally pulled into Black Rock City, we had been on the road for 18 hours, and the sun was just coming up.  Sleep would soon be impossible due to the heat, so we drank some coffee and set about building our camp.   As the sun passed its zenith, we had most of a shade structure, a working kitchen, and a handful of tents set up.  It was time to start work on the Garden of Missed Connections.

After spending long nights fixing last year’s Garden in the deep playa, we decided to try an experiment this year, and keep the Garden right next to our camp.  As we got our hand-held auger ready to dig holes in the ground, half a dozen neighbors came by to offer help and advice.  We must have looked nervous – the desert surface is famously tough, and some of us expected the auger to go in an inch and then spin us around.  To guard against this possibility, four of us held onto the auger and braced ourselves for impact. 

Much to our surprise, the drilling was easy.  John Vajda had the most construction experience and he shouted “Up!” and “Down!” to coordinate everyone.  Based on all the people that stopped to watch, it must have been a spectacle (later that day, we reduced the auger crew to just two people).

Not having a forklift this year, we decided to assemble our Garden towers on the ground, and then raise them up on ropes like we were building a barn.  A lot of our neighbors came by to help and we nervously guided the 18-foot tall creations into the holes we dug.  The hardest part was done, but it was getting dark, so we decided to get some much-needed rest.  By the end of Tuesday, our lanterns were hung in the towers, our control box was attached, and we were ready to enjoy the burn.  

On the whole, placing the Garden beside our camp didn’t work out the way we hoped.  Our towers were somewhat lost in the jumble of the city and we got far fewer visitors than we usually do.  Nevertheless, some people did come in and leave messages in our Book of Missed Connections.  We would stop by every day to read the new ones, whether silly or heartfelt, poignant or joyous.

The one great benefit of having the Garden by our camp was the chance to climb up into the towers for an amazing view of the city.  Each sunset, several of us would converge on the towers from multiple directions and climb up to the top.  It was a perfect lookout and we would often stay for an hour as the warm colors of the sunset gave way to the neon lights underneath.

As Gardeners of Missed Connections, we spend a lot of time thinking about our community and the lives that we touch, however briefly.  Our work rewards us with a sense of human closeness, and – at least for this Gardener – that closeness was more vivid in 2013 than ever before.  Our greatest memories come from the smallest moments – watching the stars together from the stillness of our camp, the generosity of a passing stranger, faces smiling in shared appreciation.  The Garden of Missed Connections is a window onto our own relationships, and we’re so grateful to everyone that supports us in this endeavor.  Until we build the next one, treasure the people you connect with, and find your sense of appreciation wherever you are!

2013 Garden Design

Our 2013 Garden design emphasizes simplicity to achieve an atmosphere of tranquility and aspiration.  We're arranging our lanterns in two vertical towers, with a podium containing the book of missed connections placed in between.  We're hoping that the vertical arrays will offer new possibilities for lighting patterns, including musical equalizers and dynamic bouncing effects.  Both towers will arrive at the desert in two halves, which will be anchored to the ground and then attached to each other.  We hope you'll stop by to see the finished product!

2013 Build Weekend

Thanks to everyone who showed up to make our 2013 build weekend a big success!  We had about a dozen people in Aditi's backyard at one time, which is the most we've ever had for one of these - and good thing too!  At one point, I think we had a few people running to home depot, a team working on each tower, and a team fixing the control box.

Our original plan was to build our two towers in the backyard, then carry them out to the truck next weekend.  Unfortunately, nobody stopped to appreciate just how heavy 18-foot towers could be, and we soon realized that there was no possible way to navigate them up the narrow paths to the front of the house.  After much deliberation, we decided to break them down into a few pieces and reassemble them on site.

Special thanks to those amazing campmates that came to build even though they can't make it to the burn this year: Teri, Eric, and April!  

We're really happy with how the project is turning out, and can't wait to present it in the desert!

Burn 2012 Report

Burning Man 2012

As ever, Burning Man was a hectic, exhilarating experience, and we all returned happy, full of wonder, and weeks behind on our regular jobs.  Because of the latter, this update is coming embarrassingly late, but we’d still like to relate our story.

Our advance team set out for the desert late on Friday night.  The back seat of Ben’s truck is uncomfortable for anything except sleeping, and Paul and John took full advantage of it as we drove.  As the sun was rising over Reno, we ate breakfast, then noticed something peculiar about the box truck:  It was tilting, subtly yet unmistakably, to the right.  We decided to look inside to investigate, but when we tried to open the back door, it wouldn’t budge.  As we discovered, our pallet of 200 water bottles had tilted over against the right side of the truck and the door.  After about 20 minutes, we created enough of a gap to let somebody squeeze through and start restacking bottles.

The rest of our drive went smoothly and we pulled into our camp location around noon. Virna and Paul set out to place our marker flags as Jenny cooked and everyone else set up camp.  By the time we finished, it was getting dark and we had to save the bulk of construction for the next day.

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise Sunday morning with the playa being quite empty still.

Early on Sunday, we arranged for an auger to come drill our postholes.  For once, there was no line and the bobcat came driving up to us 20 minutes later.  Our side gates were fully-assembled and they went up pretty easily.  In fact, everything went smoothly until we got to the center gate.  This was too big to carry up in one piece, and we still needed to drill bolt holes and drive in about a hundred screws.  We planned to power our screw driver from a small inverter that was plugged into ben’s truck.  That worked for about a minute before the inverter blew and refused to work again.  Our battery-powered tools quickly died too, leaving the project half-finished.  Completing the perfect storm, Lance and Manuel, who were driving up separately with a generator, couldn’t find our camp, and we wouldn’t run into them until days later.  So we were forced to retreat to camp in low spirits as Burning Man was officially being opened.

Monday morning, we set out early to reverse our fortunes.  The wonderful artists at a neighboring installation – the Alien Carousel – had a generator, and they very graciously allowed us to borrow it for a few hours.  We worked as quickly as we could, and put in the last screw just as the carousel guys told us they needed their generator again.   It was about this time that we had one of our first magical moments on the playa.  A guy came by to look at our piece and declared that it was his second favorite on the playa – second only to the sunken ship.  Exaggeration or not, he left us feeling positively elated and we put in our finishing touches with renewed energy.

Tuesday, we finally got our chance to relax and enjoy the burn, but we came back to our installation in the evening with a fresh battery.  We expected this to be a simple routine, but as we sealed up the box, we noticed that the lights weren’t working. Instead, they were stuck on one, rather dim, color.  As our resident engineer, John went to work with a volt meter, trying to isolate the problem.  We suspected dust was blocking the battery contacts, and we tried to clean up those connections.  Along the way, we bridged the battery with a wrench, sending a shower of sparks flying into the air.  Luckily, the wrench fell before it was completely welded to the battery.  After some time, we realized that the problem was overheating.  Our circuit boards were sealed in a plastic bin, and hidden under a black stage platform.  We decided to elevate the platform for more airflow, and did our best to create air channels.  The project worked after that, but we had to be careful to turn it off every morning from then on.

One day, as we were coming out to the Garden, we found a group of picnickers, sitting on a blanket and tasting an assortment of vodkas.   We chatted, and they invited us to share in their drinks.  As honored as we were that someone would choose our piece for a picnic setting, we were entirely floored when they told us a story from earlier that day.  Apparently, we just missed a group of artists that came to sketch a couple of models as they posed on our gates.  (If any of those artists are reading this, we would love to see your work!)

Saturday night, we gathered at the Garden one last time for a small party.  People would come by and we would offer them drinks and sit around on our main archway to chat.  It was one of our very favorite moments of the week, and we left that day with a deeper appreciation for the community we were a part of.

Thanks so much to all of our workers, donors, friends, and everyone who came together to make our piece possible this year.  The Garden has enabled us to reach so many people with our work, in a way that would never be possible on our own.  Over the week, we heard so many positive comments from people who were touched by what we did.  Some that simply enjoyed the view and chuckled at some poetic comment, and some that fully resonated with the sculpture, leaving pages of their deep thoughts in our book.  As ever, we’re looking forward to the next year, and excited to see how the burn evolves, and how our camp evolves with it.  Until then, treasure the connections you have, and be prepared to let go of those that are lost!

Best wishes,
The Gardeners of Missed Connections

One week left to fund the Garden of Missed Connections!

The deadline for our Kickstarter is only one week away! We've gotten a lot of support but we're still a good bit short of our $2000 goal. If you like the idea of the Garden, want to give back to the Burning Man community, or simply want to help a group of young artists cover the cost of their materials, please consider heading on over and donating a few dollars to us, or posting the link to our Kickstarter on your Facebook page.

Also: several of our donors have noted that they'd like to write a note in the Book of Missed Connections but won't be on the playa this year. Since this makes us sad, we'd like to announce that donors of any level ($1+) can send us a short (200 word max) note for inclusion in the Book. Simply drop us an email at gardenofmissedconnections@gmail.com and we'll happily include it in this year's book. And if you're really hard on your luck and can't spare a dollar, it's okay: just email us your note. It's only ink and time.

Love,

The Gardeners

Thanks to everyone at Prepare for the Playa!

This past Sunday Paul and Jesse were lucky enough to table a booth at Prepare for the Playa, an SF street festival featuring tons of playa-related goodies ranging from classes at Playa University (how to put out fires, how to connect your electroluminscent wires, etc.) to performances and dance pieces to an absolutely gob-smacking number of amazing vendors. We got to chat about the Garden with a whole number of great folk, both burners and non, and ended the day feeling once again very happy and grateful to be part of such an amazing community. To everyone involved with P4P and everyone we met, we just want to say thanks so much and we really hope to see you out on the open desert!

Love,

The Gardeners

Lantern Build

A great build yesterday by our Bay Area Gardeners!  Six of us got together in Concord to work on our color-changing lanterns.  It was slow going at first as we tried to remove the old paper from the lantern walls.  Even though the paper was always prone to ripping, getting it out of every corner of the latticework took hours.  We replaced it with a fiberglass fabric that should hold up much better against the elements.

We also put in our new, much brighter, LED lights.  After experimenting with several types of LEDs, we decided to go with flexible LED ribbons, wound around a wooden dowel.  Unlike the conventional LED bulbs we tried, which send most of their light straight down to the ground, the LED ribbons can be aimed outward at the lantern sides.  The result is a lantern that appears much brighter for the same amount of power.

 At the end of the day, we had all eight lanterns ready to go.  We think they’ll really look great in this year’s installation.