Flaming Lotus Girls is a volunteer-based group of artists who make large-scale kinetic fire art. FLG has been described as a "women-focused anarchist art collective." [1] The group began in 2000, in San Francisco, California, as a group of six women and two men who wanted to gain the fabrication and design experience needed to create large sculptural installations. [2] The group includes over a hundred members of all genders, and a majority of the members are women. [3] Many of the sculptures have interactive elements, allowing the audience to control the lighting, flames, sound, or other effects. [4] The collective's work has appeared throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. [5]
Mutopia Evolution was an art installation at Burning Man in 2023. [6]
Sea of Dreams is a 2022 Black Rock City Honoraria project. [7] Sea of Dreams is an immersive sculptural landscape featuring origami boats bound for a magical island of fiery plants and mystical origami cranes.
Serenity is a 2019 Black Rock City Honoraria project. [8] It features a group of three giant, and many smaller fireflies escaping the pieces of a large broken jar. Serenity is primarily sculpted in steel - and features interactive flame and LED effects at night. It debuted at Burning Man in August 2019. [9]
Noetica is a set of two sculptures constructed from 144 stainless steel squares carved with intricate patterns. The larger of the two sculptures is hydraulically powered - and may be controlled by manually manipulating the smaller sculpture. Noetica was displayed in Black Rock City, NV in 2017. [10]
Pulse is an anatomically-correct heart that beats fire through its four chambers, emulating the blood flow through the human heart. [11] The outer steel structure mimics the intricate vasculature and predominant veins and arteries. Above the heart chambers, the aortic arch shoots pulses of fire into the night sky. [12] The sculpture was displayed at the SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco in 2016 as part of an event promoting a Flaming Lotus Girls photo calendar. [11]
Xylophage is a giant sculptural fungi featuring sound, light and fire, sprouting from the remains of an enormous tree. [1] Xylophage appeared at Burning Man in 2013. [4]
Tympani Lambada is a sculptural representation of the inner ear, with interactive controls for its flames and LED lights. [13] The sculpture is approximately 80 by 40 feet and weighs 20,000-25,000 pounds. [14] The planning and construction of the sculpture involved building large trusses out of pipes that carry propane, linked with 140 joints. [14]
Soma is a stainless steel neuron that illustrates flowing electricity through crowd-controlled LED light patterns that shoot along its dendrites and axon. Soma appeared at Electric Daisy Carnival in 2013. [15] In 2014 it was installed at Pier 14 along the Embarcadero on the San Francisco waterfront for one year, adapted to light up with LED lights instead of the original balls of fire. [16] In 2016 it moved to Vallejo, California as a public art installation for two years, as part of an effort to draw visitors to the city's downtown and waterfront areas. [17]
Mutopia is a spiraling sculpture of "seedpods," laid out according to the Golden Ratio, a proportion found throughout art and nature. This sculpture was also displayed at Maker Faire Bay Area in 2011. [18]
The Serpent Mother is a 168-foot-long (51 m) sculpture of a skeletal serpent coiled around her egg. Serpent Mother has appeared at Electric Daisy Carnival and Coachella in 2012 and Burning Man. [19] In 2017, Serpent Mother was featured at Beakerhead in Calgary. In 2018, Serpent Mother was featured at the White Night Festival in Melbourne, Australia. [20]
This sculpture, originally built of steel, driftwood and fire systems, rises from the earth in the form of an abstracted bird. The Angel's wings burn continuously with ambient flame, and each feather features audience-controlled "poofer" fire effects.
Its head, formed from curved steel plate and featuring hand-blown glass eyes, stands 20 feet (6.1 m) tall and functions as a wood-burning fireplace. Participants are invited to move around and between the Angel's feathers, and to climb and sit atop its driftwood torso.
During its debut appearance at Burning Man, the driftwood torso was burnt as part of the performance. A new steel one was designed and constructed in the winter of 2009–2010, to bring to Toronto's Winter Festival.
A collection of seven sculptures approximately 15 feet (4.6 m) in height, representing the stars of the Pleiades constellation. The Seven Sisters include Alcyone, Celano, Maia, Taygeta, Asterope, Merope, and Electra.
A Merope rebuild was completed in March 2012, and features CNC plasma-cut stainless steel sides.
A 12-foot (3.7 m) copper sculpture of a woman's hand that shoots flame from all five fingers.
Huge plumes of liquid fire controlled by MIDI.
Interactive flaming flowers, cacti, arbors and more.
A garden of fire, including copper flowers, a lily pond, and a weeping willow.
A sculptural flame thrower. Created for the 2000 Burning Man Festival. [2]
The Flaming Lotus Girls were featured in Dust & Illusions , [21] a documentary about the history of Burning Man. Pouneh Mortazavi, Rebecca Anders, Rosa Anna DeFilippis, Caroline Miller, Charlie Gadeken and James Stauffer were the Flaming Lotus Girls members interviewed for the film. The footage features the Serpent Mother.
Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. It is part of beach wrack.
In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon the architrave and is capped by the moldings of the cornice. A frieze can be found on many Greek and Roman buildings, the Parthenon Frieze being the most famous, and perhaps the most elaborate.
Burning Man is a week-long large-scale desert event focused on "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance" held annually in the western United States. The event's name comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred to as the Man, that occurs on the penultimate night, the Saturday evening before Labor Day. Since 1991, the event has been at Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno. According to Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey in 2004, the event is guided by ten stated principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.
Tori Busshi was a Japanese sculptor active in the late 6th and early 7th century. He was from the Kuratsukuri clan, and his full title was Shiba no Kuratsukuri-be no Obito Tori Busshi (司馬鞍作部首止利仏師); Busshi is a title meaning "the maker of Buddhist images". By the early 7th century, Tori Busshi had become the favorite sculptor of Soga no Umako and Prince Shōtoku. Such high-ranking patrons indicate that Tori was highly esteemed as an artist and not just an anonymous craftsman. Many extant Asuka period sculptures in gilt bronze are credited to Tori and his workshop. The artist's work epitomizes Japanese sculpture during the era, with its solid, geometric figures in front-oriented, characteristic poses.
The Antiguan Carnival is a celebration of emancipation from slavery, held annually on the island of Antigua. It is a thirteen-day festival of colorful costumes, beauty pageants, talent shows, and music. The festival begins in late July and ends the first Tuesday in August, known as Carnival Tuesday. Both Carnival Monday and Carnival Tuesday are public holidays on the island. Antiguan Carnival replaced the Old Time Christmas Festival in 1957, with hopes of inspiring tourism in Antigua and Barbuda. Some elements of the Old Time Christmas Festival remain in the modern Carnival celebrations.
Beverly Pepper was an American sculptor known for her monumental works, site specific and land art. She remained independent from any particular art movement. She lived in Italy, primarily in Todi, since the 1950s.
The JPMorgan Chase Building is an office building in San Francisco, California, 560–584 Mission Street, on the border between South of Market and the Financial District. Designed by architect César Pelli, the building stands 128.02 m (420.0 ft) and has about 655,000 square feet (60,900 m2) of office space. It also has two levels of underground parking and a large plaza. About 400,000 sq ft (37,000 m2) of the building is leased to the major tenant JPMorgan Chase. This is one of many new highrise projects completed or under construction on Mission Street since 2000.
Fire art is a piece of art that uses active flames as an essential part of the piece. The piece may either use flame effects as part of a sculpture, or be a choreographed performance of fire effects as the piece burns; the latter being almost a type of performance art.
Bridge is a public art work by artist Peter Flanary. It is located on the Hank Aaron State Trail in the Menomonee Valley south of downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The sculpture was donated to the State of Wisconsin by the nonprofit Menomonee Valley Partners. The sculpture is located in Three Bridges Park near the bridge from Mitchell Park.
Allow Me, also known as Umbrella Man, is a 1983 bronze sculpture by John Seward Johnson II, located in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon, United States. The sculpture, one of seven Allow Me casts, was donated anonymously to the City of Portland in 1984 for display in the Square. It depicts a life-sized man dressed in a business suit, hailing a cab and holding an umbrella. Constructed from bronze, aluminum and stainless steel, the sculpture stands six feet, ten inches tall and weighs 460 pounds. The sculpture is one of many works of art generated by the city's Percent for Art program, and is considered part of the City of Portland and Multnomah County Public Art Collection courtesy of the Regional Arts & Culture Council.
The Kelpies are a pair of monumental steel horse-heads between the Scottish towns of Falkirk and Grangemouth. They stand next to the M9 motorway and form the eastern gateway of the Forth and Clyde Canal, which meets the River Carron here. Each head is 30 metres (98 ft) high.
Jen Lewin is an American interactive artist and engineer. She is based in New York City and specializes in large scale installations in public spaces, usually combining elements such as light, sound and complex engineering. Her interactive light installation The Pool debuted in 2008 and has been exhibited across the globe, in cities such as Singapore, Sydney, Denver, Montréal and Prague, and in events such as South By Southwest and Burning Man.
Charles Sherman is an American artist best known for his continuum sculptures based on a three-dimensional form of the Möbius strip. Sherman’s work is included in museum and public collections, such as the San Diego Museum of Art, the Mobile Museum of Art, and the Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Asia. His sculpture and jewelry designs have appeared in contemporary design and architectural publications. Serenity (2006), part of his monumental ceramic Infinity Ring body of work, is installed lakeside at the Fountain Park Sculpture Garden in Fountain Hills, Arizona, and also in the front of the John Entenza House in Santa Monica, California, a precursor to the Case Study Houses.
Martha Sturdy is a Canadian artist and designer. Sturdy gained international attention for her wearable sculpture in the late 1970s, which evolved into further series of sculptural home furnishings using resin, steel, brass and salvaged cedar. Sturdy’s studio has since expanded to provide custom furniture, fixtures and artworks for fashion, retail and hospitality clients including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and Louis Vuitton.
Beakerhead is a multi-day festival held every September in Calgary, Alberta, Canada that combines the arts/culture sectors with the science/technology sectors to encourage collaboration, innovation, and science education through interactive art exhibits, engineered installations, entertainment, and workshops – drawing international presenters and attendees. Beakerhead also includes a year-round education and outreach initiative.
Wendell Dayton was an American sculptor of both large- and small-scale abstract, mostly steel, compositions. He operated a personal sculpture park in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, where he also lived and worked. At age 79, Dayton had a piece—a 1968 stainless steel work entitled Crescent—acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for its permanent collection. At 80, he had a six-decade survey of his work shown at the Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles.
The Emeryville mudflat sculptures were a series of found object structures along the San Francisco Bay shoreline of Emeryville, California, largely constructed from discarded materials found on-site such as driftwood. The mudflat sculptures were first erected in 1962 and received national attention by 1964; through the 1960s and 70s, anonymous, usually amateur artists would construct sculptures visible to traffic at the eastern end of the Bay Bridge. With the creation of the Emeryville Crescent State Marine Reserve in 1985 and increased attention to ecosystem preservation, the last mudflat sculptures were removed in 1997.
Love is a sculpture by Ukrainian artist Alexander Milov. The sculpture was featured at the 2015 Burning Man festival in Nevada. The sculpture appears to represent two humans who are at odds, but each has an inner child attempting to connect with each other.
The 90 minutes long documentary features the Flaming Lotus in a 15 minutes segment.