This year the Burning Man Arts Foundation did things a little differently. They cut back on the grants to the large rave camps and gave more to the art. You could totally tell a difference. I have never been so amazed as I was this year by the art. Don't get me wrong, the art at Burningman is always amazing, but my jaw was dropping several times throughout the week.

The first thing I heard about was the Belgian Waffle. Zac told me it was going to be the biggest fire on the playa ever. Bigger than the man, bigger than the temple. The thing about the waffle, was that it wasn't called the waffle. It was actually called Uchronia. It got the nickname and it stuck. I was walking back from the man one night by myself and was joined by a guy that started talking to me. We were discussing the name of the waffle and how no one seems to know it's real name. While we were discussing it, we were stopped by a couple. They asked us to help them. "He thinks the waffle looks like a bear, I think it looks like a snake, what do you think?" My new found friend and I started laughing because they confirmed what we were just discussing. I told them I thought it looked like a big green fan.

I saw it during the day and wasn't really awestruck by it. It was big. It was cool. But just not that amazing. This has happened a couple of times in the past. I come home then read about something online that I had seen there and think, damn, why didn't I pay more attention to that! The waffle is just like that. It wasn't actually funded by the organization. The two artists funded the project themselves. Turns out, they are actually from Belgian. They brought together a well rounded group of people from Belgian to build it. From factory workers to artists where everyone was empowered to be creative with it and build it together. All from low-quality Canadian wood destined for recycling.

When the waffle was burning we were at our camp ready to leave and go home. We were probably around 3km from the fire and we couldn't believe the size of the fire and the size of the dust devils coming out of it.

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I found the man to be a little odd this year. He seemed really small. Maybe it was because he went up and down and always seemed to be down. The inside of the base of the man is usually quite a bit of fun. This year most of the rooms were really empty. The whole base was done in an art deco theme. The entrance at the back of the man had several pieces of art by Alex Grey. Pieces that I spent ALOT of time staring at. He was at Burning Man this year camped at Entheon Village that I will touch on soon. There was another room that was a game. I wasn't so much interested in the game as I was with the art. It was large scale art with smaller scale art drawn on top. Beautiful.

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I wasn't all that happy with the temple as I have been every other year. Every other year I am awestruck by it's beauty. David Best used to make the temple from left over pieces of dinosaur puzzles. He would make the temple one foot shorter than the man and they were intricate pieces of art. Last year Mark Grieves took over for David and made a beautiful pagoda style temple that wasn't as tall as the temple usually is, but it was moving and beautiful. This year, it lacked. It was small to scale and just not...pretty. Dull really. But, it didn't stop from helping people to express what they needed to express. I wrote my thoughts to who I needed to and cried. There was a flute player there that added to the whole experience. I had a moment with the person next to me at the temple while I was chilling. Things that Burning Man is built on, to bond with a stranger for a fleeting moment, but to remember it forever.

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One night while we were wandering the esplanade and the desert we saw fire in the distance. We had seen it all night and our eyes were drawn to it. It was alot of fire. Fire! So off we went. What I experienced there was amazing and kind of scary. Too much stimulation. It was a big party. A big party being held in the midst of a 168 foot long serpent coiled around a burning egg. Oh, but it was much more than that. Each vertebrae of the spine was on fire and would shoot flames. Oh, but even more than that, the head of the serpent was moving up and down and around, the fangs were on fire. We were standing below the head as I was mesmerized by it. There was a heavy bass beat to the left of me and a heavy bass beat to the right. I was squeezed between so many people dancing. The flames shooting into the sky all around. The only thing that kept me sane was Rad's hand hanging onto mine. Unbelievable.

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Another favorite piece was in front of center cafe. There were 3 women all made of metal rings. Each was in a different form of prayer. One woman was on her knees with her hands together in prayer. At night, she had a fire burning in her heart. The middle one was standing with her hand raised to the heavens. At night, her hands were on fire. The last one was on her hands and knees. At night she cried tears of fire. This one was my favorite. I loved the tears. You could be guaranteed to see someone standing behind her doing all sorts of dirty things to her. They were truly amazing.

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The operation table was back this year. I hadn't seen it in the past but it was on our street this year. It was a life size operation game table. You use metal tongs to get the bits out of the table and you got zapped if you missed. They added a new element to it though. You could try to get the man out of the mind. If you missed though, you got buzzed and spanked with a paddle. If you got it, you got to spank them with the paddle. Good fun.

I'm not sure if I should even be mentioning this in the Art writeup, but it was beautiful. There are always big lasers. I could usually care less about them. This year though, I forget who thought to do it, but one of our crew grabbed a handful of playa and threw it up at the laser that was just above his head. The playa hit it and it looked like it exploded in green diamonds. It was sooooo beautiful. We stayed there for a long time, everyone throwing playa up in the air. The cool thing was that others saw it and stopped to do it as well. Then while they were doing it, others stopped while we were walking away. I wonder how long that went on for.

Like I mentioned earlier Alex Grey was camped at Entheon Village. This was an amazing place. They had a couple of galleries that had the most amazing art. Not even the art, but the tent that it was displayed in. I was blown away by the detail they put into it. They had a meditation tent that I almost fell asleep in. It was a round tent with bedding on a raised section all around the edge. Great minimal music and warmth. The big tent again had amazing art and lighting. They had talks and showed movies.

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There was a brightly colored balloon that looked like a venus flytrap. I loved the colors and the way it waved in the wind so gently. I had heard about it before I went down there and was looking forward to it. When I went to see it I was rewarded with a great site. There was a little girl sitting on part of the piece. I loved how she was awed by it. Made me miss my little girl. Harmony would have loved it.

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Out in the middle of the playa, in the dark was a box. The box was about 6 feet tall and 2 or 3 feet wide. The depth was about half a foot. When you looked into it at the front though, it was lit up around the edges and looked like it was a really long tunnel that you couldn't see the end of. It was an endless mirror. I was blown away by it in the state that I was in. It took forever for Rad to explain it to me before I got it. I thought it was freakin magic!

This one is kind of hard to explain. But from a distance it looked like a wall of lights that changes colors and designs. This kind of piece is not uncommon there so I really didn't think much of it. That is, until we went right up to it. This is where it differs. It was a circle of lights. There was a center pole with lights strung from the center to the outer ring of the circle around that pole. There was about 20 strings from the ground up. The lights would change from the center to the outside. Really hard to explain. But it was amazing the effect they made from it.

Even around home art was to be found. The street signs themselves were art this year. Every other year they are just white rectangles with black writing. This year they put alot more thought into them. They were really pretty. I begged Rad to go find me a sign Saturday afternoon. I wanted the one that said Hope. He had to go 6 blocks before he could find one that wasn't taken yet. Thanks Rad!

We even did a little bit of art ourselves. I had a great idea to do a bus stop this year. My plan was to build a bus shelter that people could use to get out of the elements and perhaps art cars would stop at. It was a project that we eneded up downsizing. I asked Troy and Tania if they could take care of it. So they brought a bench and I grabbed some fun fur in our camp colors. I took Sean's bus stop design and tweaked it and Troy and Tania got it printed on metal. They even bought an extra sign for it. It got used quite a bit, art cars even stopped. It was fun.

I'm not much of an art car kind of girl. I've tried every year to jump on an art car but I just don't have fun on them. There are some cool ones that I have seen in the past. Now though, someone has raised the bar. A 3 story victorian mansion on wheels. This mansion was being pulled by a real steam engine. Again, I had heard of this ahead of time, but reading about and seeing it was something entirely different. I saw it at night when it crossed my path. The steam engine was a fully functional 1920's steam engine that was lit up with flames at night. The mansion was a beautiful replica. When I saw it, they had people in the mansion that made it seem that much more real. There was a soldier in the back that stared straight ahead and never moved. One window there was a woman in victorian garb hanging out the window shouting. From the top window was people dressed amazingly like ghosts waving in the wind. Excuse my language, but it was fucking incredible.

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This is all I can think of at the moment, but it is not uncommon for the memories to keep flooding back in for long afterwards. There might just be another "Art" blog.

Thanks to my campmates for some of the photos and to the people of flickr!