World in flames - fire sculpture

It's a new year, full of possibilities. One day in and everything has gone well so far. Phew!. I have high hopes that it will at least be better than last year and one of my biggest hopes is that we will finally see an end to the Covidopia that has gripped the planet these last two years. One of my other hopes is that Hive will finally set the world on fire (In a good way).

Talking of setting the world on fire. That is something I was thinking about when I made this fire sculpture in Duncannon in the year 2015. I had stayed on for two days after making my Dragon sand sculpture as I was asked by the festival organizers could I create some sort of fire performance on the beach to close the festival.

I was happy to keep on creating, (for a fee) and so asked them to gather some wood, straw and cloth and find me somewhere to work.

The holy Shed

Luckily the local priest had this garage in his garden and allowed me to make use of it. I was very envious of this building. I would love to have a studio/ workshop this size and with all the natural light. Obviously, he didn't use it himself except for storing the car he drives to exorcisms and for sharpening stakes.

The supplies were brought and sadly, it was mostly pallets which are a pain in the arse to work with. To take them apart I used a blunt chainsaw and hammer.

I wanted to make a big ball, divided into four quarters that were hinged at the bottom and secured together at the top by string. I hobbled together the central post and using lots of short sections of pallet wood made the arches for the ball. It was difficult with the limited tools I had. I wished I had a proper saw and an air nailgun for much quick assembly. I hinged these together on a simple platform.

The above is what I achieved after my first day. It was more frustrating fun.

For day two I used some other offcuts that I found around the place to try and cover in
the rest of the form with a lattice of ribs, Materials were certainly in short supply. Finally, I stapled cloth and straw to these ribs to look a bit like landmasses.

Lifes a beach

Building a fire sculpture is one thing, setting it on fire is entirely another. As the sun went down we transported the structure down to the beach. Sand has another use of being great at putting out fires. It was very windy, this was not something I could not control, the show had to go on.

A large crowd gathered and I was feeling very self-conscious standing there with my creation and a box of matches. I had my ideas of how this was all supposed to go down but with the strong wind it was anyone's guess, I was worried for the audience. I asked them to move upwind of the display but just as I started to light the thing the wind changed direction. What had I done?

This thing, propelled by the wind went up much faster than I had hoped and the wind carried flaming embers towards the crowd. Luckily I had kept them back far enough to not smell burning flesh but I was very worried that I would be reading about this in the newspaper the next day for all the wrong reasons.

Although it wasn't spectacular, it worked ok. The whole ball light up and at its height the string on top burned through allowing the four segments to fall open and release a flaming ball that took off and created an orbit around the structure. This ball was connected by a wire that I had wrapped around the central pole. As it unwound it allowed the ball to fly around like it was a phoenix from the flames.

The spectacle sure wasn't as good as I had hoped but the audience seemed to enjoy the preceding and happily, nobody died for my art.

Video evidence

Below is a video provided to me by John Glennon, one of the festival organisers. It was nice to have it documented so I can learn from the experience.

For those who want to see more, here is a video of a more successful attempt at a similar thing.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.