2021: The Year of “Art No Matter What”
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Thanks to a number of generous donors, Burning Man Project was able to give nearly $1M in Honoraria art grants to 62 artists in 2021. These grants provided some much-needed relief to artists around the world during a time when events and projects were being delayed or canceled and material costs skyrocketed due to COVID-19.
Even amidst obstacles and hardship, this year has proven that makers-gonna-make ART NO MATTER WHAT. We wanted to share what just a handful of these artists have been up to, bringing their Honoraria art projects to life…
Leeroy New
is a contemporary Filipino fine artist based in Manila whose works overlap with theatre, film, fashion, and visual arts. He is known for his immersive installations that use a variety of found objects directly sourced from the immediate material culture of his current environment.
“A fragment of the Mebuyan Vessel has drifted off the main body and floated through space. It has latched onto this surface by the park, and now, has started growing into a new vessel.”
“Mebuyan is a goddess of death and fertility from Bagobo mythology, who has been described as having breasts all over her body to nurse the spirits of children into adulthood, providing them with strength to continue their journey in the afterlife.”
Leeroy New’s piece “Coronang Tigas” is included in the catalogue for the Boundless Space art action happening now through October 8, 2021.
Valerie Elizabeth Mallory
is a Bay Area artist who has been creating art installations for Burning Man since 2004.
“I make my art because I love expression and I love the nuances of communication. I work very hard to convey as much expressive feeling in a way that is uncluttered and pure.”
“This piece is about the beauty of loss and decay of a building, a community, or loved one. The world takes back its own. Elegance emerges from loss and tells the story of predicted and necessary change.”
Andrii Krapyvchenko
and the Merman team
aka the Universe Achievers (UA) art group, are self-described “Ukrainian artists, experienced burners, and true fun-seekers.”
A message embodied by the art they’ve created over this past year, the “Merman” art team’s motto is:
“We all get stuck sometimes, you have to stay afloat.”
“Merman art was visited by swimmers from Kyiv sports schools. We believe that all obstacles in everyone’s life can be overcome. You can’t give up, because there is always something worth keeping afloat for and we want to show it with our art. By inviting real swimmers to the installation, we emphasize the connection between art, culture, sports, and the fact that if the person strives and doesn’t not give up — it’s possible to get everything.” —Merman art team
David Oliver
is part of a long-standing art collective and think tank in Ventura, California. He likes to express his creativity through a variety of media, including music, performance, and sculpture.
Inspired by his 2019 art installation called “Portal,” David Oliver explains:
“Petaled Portal is a guide, a vessel … a path to a place where words are crutches, where pain is not necessary, and pleasure is of the past. A place where we are together when alone. A place where there is no phone. A destination complete, a settling of a searching soul.”
Julia Nelson-Gal
is a San Francisco Bay Area artist who works with photography, collage, and printmaking, using found materials: old family snapshots, 19th-century photos excavated from people’s attics, microfilm, books and LIFE magazines discarded by libraries.
“I am attracted to old data — information contained in formats no longer relevant, mostly from the 1960s back to the 19th-century.”
“Unbound’s materials represent the debris field of human thought. Words, illustrations, and covers — the remains of books decommissioned from libraries—illustrate the power of human ideas and serve as historical evidence.”
Antwane Lee
is a licensed architect in Chicago, Illinois, with over 22 years of experience building multi-million dollar projects.
He is the lead on “The Solar Shrine” project, a 2020/2021 Honorarium Art Grant project encouraging the individual to “immerse yourself in Afrofuturism.”
Antwane is very active in his community, sits on a variety of civic/art boards, and curates events on Afrofuturism, science-fiction, and mythology.
“I am passionate about building holistic environments which merge art, history, and spirituality.”
Many elements of the design of “The Solar Shrine” are taken from Ancient Egyptian and Nubian cosmology. They believed that the Sun was a deity, Ra, who had metaphysical powers as creator of the Universe and the give of life on Earth. The Solar Barque would carry Ra across the heavens during the day and through the underworld at night in preparation for Ra’s rebirth in the east.
The Solar Shrine is currently being built in Chicago, with the help of many volunteers in the Burner community, as well as a group of convicted felons, as part of the project’s community outreach.
Local to the Illinois area? You can join The Solar Shrine team for a special Halloween Fundraiser (Saturday, October 30th, from 6–10pm in River Forest, Illinois) sponsored by the Pinnacle Foundation — all proceeds from the party will fund material purchases for The Solar Shrine Project, debuting at Burning Man 2022. Get more information about the event and purchase tickets here.
William Nemitoff
is the founder of Curious Form, a creative fabrication studio in New Orleans, Louisiana. He leverages his knowledge of diverse materials and building methods to craft innovative concepts, custom furniture, collaborative art, and impactful public installations.
Always curious, Nemitoff seeks inspiration from interests in science, technology, and the natural world.
“A symbol of beauty and fertility, the orchid serves as an analogy for the interaction of the Universe’s smallest particles. On the quantum level, reality is only the interaction of things, and space is only packets of energy and matter engaging. By engaging with each other and the art, participants make the space, the community, and the artwork real.”
Philipp Blume
& The Department of Precision and Soul
is an Austro-Californian art collective formed in 2018 by Bay Area and Austrian artists, designers and engineers, and Open Austria, the official Austrian representation in Silicon Valley. They design all their art installations in a joint creative practice.
“In a reversal of the original thought experiment by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, here we are turned into a lab rat, the cat’s uncanny prey.”
Zoe Fry
is a California-based artist and founder of The Introverts Collective, a group of artists exploring the intersection of art, consciousness, and activism.
The “FIRE” installation features a grove of fire-ravaged manzanita trees from a California forest. Each tree will stand as a unique individual, formed and reformed by natural forces.
Abram Santa Cruz
is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work draws from his many years as a graphic designer, photographer, and painter. By combining photography with painting and lighting, he creates works that are bold, bright, and intense.
Kukulkan is the Mayan serpent that is the portal between the physical and spiritual worlds.
“Kukulkan’s Portal” is lined with 10,000 individually programmable LEDs. The lights are highly interactive, embedded within the acrylic layers of the merkaba. The aluminum cube truss is lined with strands of LEDs and is diffused with lexan panels behind the lasercut design of kukulkan on aluminum skins.
Ryan Mathern
of Atlanta, Georgia, has refined his approach to steel sculpture for the past 10 years. He’s known for using woodfire and propane flame effects to bring his pieces to life, and more recently has been using plastics and resins as the translucent skin of the creatures he creates.
“Whether via the light source or the outer material, giving a piece an inner glow is important to me.”
The “Citipati,” Funeral Lords, are depicted here enacting the eternal dance of death within an arching fire of perfect awareness:
Barry Crawford
is a kinetic artist, inventor, and fabricator based in Elko, Nevada, who has been producing mechanical art from found objects and custom fabricated parts since 2010.
“As a kid, I was always interested in machinery and making things that moved. I’d take apart little VCRs and make robots out of them, and Legos were a big thing for me.”
As always, the 2020/2021 Burning Man Honorarium artists—along with the thousands of creators and artists within our global community—have inspired and touched us over the past year. We cannot wait to see what all of YOU bring to the dust next year!
You can read more over on the Burning Man Journal about how artists around the world created Art No Matter What during this unique year.
Any questions? You can reach us at art@burningman.org.
