I’ve been deep in the design phase of the Playastan Crossroads banners. I’m anxious to get my hands on materials but I’m still working with pencil and paper. It’s essential get it right now, before I start working with materials at full size. I want to have a balance of designs, both visually but also representing all the countries along the Silk Road. There’s been a lot of drawing, a lot of tracing paper, and a lot of trips across the street to the office supply store to make copies.

By the end of last week I had decided on the final designs for 32 of the 33 banners. What a relief! I’m waiting to design the final, central banner, which will combine design elements from all along the Silk Road, until after I’ve been working with the materials for a while.

the design process

I’ve made the final drawings for all twelve of the smallest banners. I will have those copied onto transparencies and then use my overhead projector to enlarge them to full size. From there, I’ll trace them and convert them into “cartoons” which I can use to apply the wax to the silk.

Tomorrow Arissa, my intern, will be in and we can start on the cartoons. That will definitely feel like an accomplishment! And it gets me that much closer to actually getting my hands on materials.

Last week Peter and I had a terrific “kick off” meeting with the arts administrator crew at Burning Man Headquarters. I feel very supported by the Burning Man Organization, or BORG. I feel such a buzz to being a part of this. Yes, it’s kind of crazy. Yes, it’s kind of different from the rest of my art work (though I’ve been doing Festival work for the last 25 years). Yes, it’s a labor of love that I will probably never be compensated for. But I think it’s also an opportunity that I will feel the echoes of for many years.

I had lunch with my friend, Nina Tichava, on Friday. (She’s a terrific artist and you can check out her work here.) I love talking with Nina because she’s really a feet on the ground, professional artist.  She embodies the double life of being an artist and being a small business owner thinking about how to market and present her work so that she can make a living at it. I always come away from our lunches thinking hard.

This time, the questions I came away with were less about business and more about creativity. Why is my festival work so different from my fine art? Can I bring some of the color, some of the pattern, some of the joy and playfulness that is in my festival work into my fine art work? Does the work always have to be so serious to be taken seriously?

I was talking with Marcie McDade, editor of the Surface Design Journal and my good pal, a few months ago about the fact that I have kept these two sides of my art separate from each other, downplaying the festival work because I’ve been afraid it would change people’s perception of me as a fine artist. She encouraged me to “own it”, to embrace that work as part of my whole artistic self. Nina opined that perhaps there is an edginess to my work, an edginess that I feel free to express at Burning Man, that I’m not showing in the work that is destined for the gallery.

These are such good questions, ones that I will meditate on for the next few months as I work on this project. Perhaps I can find that edginess by integrating these two sides to my artist self? It’s certainly worth thinking about.

More final drawings