Tag Archives: Fire

August 2018 Art Build: The Recap!

Our August, 2018 monthly art build was spectacular success in the variety of art expressed, number of people and participation. We had two artistic photoshoots, started an artistic bike rack, coppersmithing, iron forging, effigy building and probably some stuff that I missed.

 

Effigy

Lead carpenter Brian begins working on the Atlas Toad effigy.

Carpenter Brian Sparrow joined us for the first time at the Meädow, so we decided to hand him some lumber and see what happened. Somehow we came up with the idea of an “Atlas” effigy, with a töad holding the weight of the world on its back. Many people pitched in on the effigy by painting it, helping construct it, or adding other accouterments. Once nighttime fell, Brian delivered an artist statement in front of the campfire, and then ceremoniously burned our sculpture.

Art Photo Shoots

Fish Union

Tommy and Christian assist in an art photoshoot that involved a fish and European flag.

Book burning

In addition to making physical things, the töads pitched in to help with two art photo shoots for Damon Hudac’s photographic endeavors. We were joined Friday night by local model Miranda Sevcovich who starred in Damon’s new book burning / censorship awareness photo project.

Behind the scenes shot of Damon, Tyler and Miranda working on their book burning art photography series.

Keri Mikulek also helped out by crafting an execution hood that was used as a prop in the shoot.

Mary models a prop that Keri made for the book burning photoshoot.

Bicycle rack

eARTh House Center for the Arts commissioned us to build them a fancy bike rack. They will place it outside their store for the convenience of their bicycle-riding customers. Sun and James did most of the metalworking.

Copper crafting

Mary brought copper foil and crafting supplies. People used them to make jewelry and other cool baubles.

Kayla hard at work making copper sheet into pretty jewelry.

Other stuff

Here are the rest of the pictures. Follow Töad Meädow on Facebook, and check out the next art build to help collaboratively make some stuff!

Amphibian 16:2 Report

At Amphibian 16:2 (July 22-24, 2016) we made Töad Meädow history with the largest fire and most mechanically successful effigy in our history. And we achieved it with a small group of core Töads figuring it all out as they went along.

Hell Hole designed conceptualized the effigy (his first large-scale art piece), and brought a cardboard model to the June art build weekend. From there, other Töads got to work on how to build the structure, aesthetic improvements and pyrotechnic considerations.

The resulting effigy burn had people gleefully running for their lives and marveling at the destructive power of Töad Art.

December and January: Hard Core Art Building at the Monthly Parties

Preparing for Saint Patrick’s Day and Frostburn

NB: Click on any photo to make it larger.

The December and January art build weekends had a bunch of Töads preparing for upcoming events. In February is Frostburn, an outdoor weekend arts festival where Töad Meädow will have an encampment.

The following month we will be rolling out in Buffalo’s famous Saint Patrick’s Day Parade with our art car, rolling exhibits and wandering performers.

Here are some things we worked on

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What you missed: Töad Gathering on February 29 AAR

AAR = After action report, LDO!!

So we held a gathering of the Töads and Buffalo burners at the clubhouse in North Buffalo last weekend. This was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants gathering and we got to meet some really cool mofos and work on some shit. Art was inspired. Plans were laid. No animals were hurt in the course of these activities, despite our best efforts.

In attendance was most of the members of Pyromancy, Buffalo’s best professional fire dancing and performance troupe.

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A Prayer to Reality

On individualism and Prometheus

Let these celebrations of reality encompass the manic spasms of a fucked up culture spiraling toward oblivion. May they be a final gasp for fresh air where there is none to be had.

Our mental environment has been overrun by the corporations. The all powerful media. There comes a point where we must ask ourselves, as a species, if we control corporations, or if they now control us? Let us return to the roots of reality and human existence.

Prometheus stole fire from the gods, and gave it to humanity. The gift of fire; the first of our technologies. This gift enabled the escape to individualism — humanity’s independence from the gods of nature.

For this, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to an eternity of avian torture: having his liver pecked out daily by a bird.

The seemingly equal omnipotency nowadays. The pervasive face of advertising and the media; the dead-eyed faces of models you see in print that all look so strangely similar. The creatures you are told to aspire to be. We are not one of them. We don’t want to be one of them. It is time to celebrate individualism without shame.

Now is the time of a new fight. Let us celebrate Prometheus’s sacrifice with liver damage and fire, and claim freedom from our new situationally imposed cultural overlords, these gods of our own making.

Töad Meädow. Possibly your last chance at true freedom within the psychic and physical landscapes that make up our fleeting reality.

Flaming Sign Artwork

Flame effects like the BEAST are fun to build and operate, but a more mellow, sustainable fire can offer an ongoing ambiance that the big stuff just can’t. I had some old steel shelves lying around and decided to try making a flaming sign. For the pattern, I used the Sacred Bat, which is the symbol of my Burning Man camp Bat Country. I plan to give them this sign as a gift when it’s completed. As with anything I make these days, it will break down for easy transport and have a sturdy stand allowing you to set it up easily.

Construction

The sign itself is an old steel shelf that I cut out with a plasma cutter. The flames come from 1/4″ copper tubing that I bent to follow the contours of the bat. There are holes drilled along the copper tube for propane to come out. The tubing is held in place with stainless steel wire. I used stainless steel because it won’t corrode when exposed to the elements. And by “elements” I mean fire.

Still needs doing:

  • Make a free standing sign stand
  • Balance the fire so there’s more or less the same amount of flame at the end as there is at the beginning

One of the problems of making a flaming pipe with holes is that the gas likes to escape the holes towards the beginning of the run more than at the end. So the fire at the start of the pipe is bigger than that at the end. This is easy to see in the picture below where I had the gas pressure turned up higher. I hope to fix this by blocking up most of the holes towards the start and maybe drilling more towards the end. The other way to mitigate this effect would be to supply propane at both ends of the copper tube, but I’m hoping to avoid this as it’s much more work.

Not that the flames on one side are much higer than on the other.

Not that the flames on one side are much higer than on the other.