Author: seacircle

Welcome to the 3rd annual Flipside Art Spotlight blog series! These are designed to bring some well-deserved attention to a pretty dang important part of our community and event: ART and the badass talents that create them! Flipside without the art would be a bunch of bored people in a field.

These will be posted every few days in the order received until the event. If you are an artist and would like to participate (and did not receive initial interview questions [check your spam folder,] please ping me at seacircle@gmail.com. Thank you, thank you for all your passion, ambition, love and sweat!

*This piece is in need of support/help. For details, please see https://www.burningflipside.com/art-project/big-top-mountain

1. What inspired you to create this art piece?

It came down to the Theme. I truly believe that the Theme for a burn is essential and matters way more than some do. It legitimately inspired this piece. A “Sisyphean Celebration” put me in the mind set of “unwinnable/unattainable” goals But also a fun aspect of it. My mind immediately thought, Carnival games. Truly unwinnable. Well, where do you have carnival games? A big top tent. The ball kept rolling in my head to the point of having a ramp along side of it and a “Sisyphus” rolling a ball up he ramp and before it burns, the ball rolls back down and the whole thing catches fire. That image was stuck in my head. I want to see that.  So i got to work figuring out if it was possible. I really wanted to be able to submit the full scale for the big effigy however, my work schedule during the run up for Flipside precludes me from doing much other than work. So i took the time and one non burner friend and scaled the whole model down and thats what i hope to see burn at Flipside.

2. What do you hope people get out of your piece?

Im an idiot with  0 build experience, and skill. I hope that people can take away that they potentially can build and bring art to Flipside. Id like people to rethink how they feel about the importance of a theme. This project would not have been dreamt of with out it. Id like to see smiles and stupid joy over this dumb thing and i hope they would like to join me with burning it. I also hope that i dont have to keep explaining what it is, but maybe i dont mind it that much.

3. Lessons Learned

Math is hard, Octagons are full of math. In reality, I think one of the big lessons i got was to trust the vision and you can do it. I had to get this thing done before Christmas this past year. Proper planning helped, reasonable goes and im excited for the potential that the thing i saw in my head is very close to a reality. And If i can do it, others can.

4. Acknowledgements

I could not have done this without my non burner friend Brian and his Wife Cheryl for letting me use their garage for 6 straight weekends. Their help was invaluable to me and i really hope they get to come out this year. Bo & Carol Reynolds for always encouraging me when i came to them with art projects. Kaleb Allen for his insight into builds and his encouragement, even if i couldn’t do a full effigy proposal, he still said i should build it anyway and bring it.

The Art Spotlight is intended to highlight our community’s artists and provide a tease for the pieces they are bringing to the event. The countdown to Flipside is on! Start getting excited about the ART!

Mitch ‘Giraffe’ Hoffman – Crank Baby 

1.       What inspired you to create this art?

This piece has been bouncing around my mind for a few years now, and it seemed like the time! I love bicycles, mechanical shit, loud dissonant noises, and interactive art! Crank Baby is the fusion of these things.

2.       What do you hope people get out of your piece?

Laughter and satisfaction!

3.       Are there any stories/lessons learned that came out of the creation of this piece? (For example, I learned not to wear flipflops when using a wood router.)

When consulting experts in machining and high-tolerance moving parts, I learned that there isn’t much crossover between the art world and the industrial world! I’d love to change that!

Also, 7/16″ is not actually that close to 1/2″.

Working and interacting with other artists is a great way to get motivated to make more art. It’s easy to find ourselves in a slump when we’re on our own.  Need a little kick in the pants, a little inspiration? We’re here to help. The Pyropolis Art Guild is hosting Art Nights At Lloyd to give our varied art community a night to come create together.

 Regular Art Nights will be held in the air-conditioned meeting room, so plan your projects for that space (unless there’s a specific class/workshop/art focus, keep this in mind in case you were wanting to bring a project that requires lots of noise, smells or mess).

 Some nights will be focused, with life drawing, workshops, speakers, etc. Many more will be a gathering to paint, weld, make blinky light projects, crochet, collaborate with other artists and much more. Let your imagination be your guide.

 We’d like to stay focused on art and leave social connecting for Church Nights, so please bring a project or find one when you arrive. Let’s make some amazing!

Art Nights At Lloyd

3106 Industrial Terrace, Austin, TX 78758

Launch: June 15 2017

7pm-10pm

(Currently scheduled for every other Thursday- check the Facebook group for updates)

**As with all things Lloyd, this is a Leave No Trace Event**

What To Bring:

Bring Your Own Art and Supplies

(or find out what is available onsite to work on- please get in touch with a host)

Pyropolis Art Guild:

Was created in order to help the artists in our community mutually support one another by sharing past, present and future art related projects, as well as encourage success through learning together and from each other. To learn more and to join the Pyropolis Art Guild, find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1344728312220948/

Image: Tom Etheridge by Bean Noneya

Is there anything you want the Flipside Community to understand about your piece?

 –When we were kids most of us recall a time period where, perhaps we’d go to the park and we’d see all these other kids playing and we could just run up to them and start playing too. No questions asked. You were just accepted. At some point in adolescence, the differences in our backgrounds start creating these divides between us. You start noticing where you belong (and where you don’t belong). At some point, you learned that it’s suddenly become weird to go up to a stranger and say, “Hey, will you be my friend?”. By the time you’re an adult, it’s so hard to make a new friend. It is for me anyway. The thing that’s amazing about the stars is they bring out that inner child in every single person who receives them. These stars are not only gifted in masses at festivals, but to people I meet in day-to-day life.

 -What inspired it?

A friend kind of twisted my arm always trying to get me into glass art. I was really busy and not that interested until one day she brought it up again and I thought maybe it would be cool to make a glass star. As a person who is both artistically and mathematically minded, I am an incredibly obsessive perfectionist. I hate looking at my paintings because all I see is their flaws. I double-triple check all my work in fear of ever being wrong. I may be the most “worryingest” girl you will ever meet, I worry about everything and am so self-critical. Sometimes I’m surprised I have any friends at all, I’m probably such a drag to be around. The stars were different. I loved looking at them. I became really obsessive, making star after star after star. Before long I had hundreds of these little glass stars and I just loved picking them up in handfuls and admiring each of them again and again. However, I was accumulating hundreds of stars and I kind of didn’t know what to do with them, so I just sort of started giving them to people. Of course, I considered selling them at first, people offered to buy them, and still continue to, but I never sold one. Thank god. I’m so glad I can say I never sold one because I think that’s one of the things that I think keeps them “pure”. In this society where so much is about ego and money, I’m thankful to keep the stars separate. So, I just continued to give them to people and hopefully, I’ll continue to be in a position to keep giving them for as long as I live, because I think they are really special. The whole project has been kind of a god-send since I’m so shy and apparently such a difficult person to get to know. Small talk is really hard for me. People think I’m weird (and not in a cool way), but now I get a pass on that. When I sit next to someone on an airplane, I get to skip that awkward period where they are acknowledging you, but you don’t really know if they want to actually engage with you. It always bothered me, that the universe may have distributed that person to sit next to me on this plane for a reason, but I’m just reading my book. Now I have a solution, I just pull out a bag of stars and say, “Hey, look, I have a bag of stars and I give them away to people for free, which one do you want?”. Whoever sees them turns into that little kid on the playground. EVERYONE loves looking at, and picking out a star. It doesn’t matter who they are. I have seen the most tired business men, all stuffy looking in their suits turn into beaming little boys so happy to get to be playing with stars on a plane. They are so thrilled to be able to take something home to their kids who miss them because they travel so much. It’s the best.

 -Any funny stories or challenges in the creation?

 I’ve gifted thousands of stars now for years. I’ve gifted them to homeless people, kids in hospitals, neighbors, people who just got out of prison, astronauts, rich people, poor people, blind people, waiters and waitresses, the tow truck driver, my cat’s vet… sometimes I even leave batches in random people’s porches. One story that has always made an impression on me, was I was at this music venue that was run by a group of felons, people who had clearly had rough lives, been to prison, and were trying to make a new path for themselves in life with running this business. A bunch of college students were celebrating their recent graduation from a very prestigious university at this venue. I happened to be at this place with an unusually large bath of stars so I busted them out all over a table and everyone swarmed around. The observation I made was that I noticed that the newly college graduates would look at a star and say, “THAT is the one I want. THAT is the star for me” and they would take it with confidence and be really enthusiastic about it. The people who had been in prison, that ran the venue, hesitated. When they saw a star they liked, they said “I really like this star but I don’t want to take the best one”, and I had to assure them that they really could have whatever star they wanted, that all these stars were going to strangers and yet they continued to behave as though they didn’t feel like they should take the star they liked the most.

 -Anything you want to say about yourself/the creative force about the piece?

I’m really boring to actually talk to when you get past the stars.

My string art was inspired by trying to come up with an interesting and fun interactive art form by using a recycled trampoline.  We have brought it to Flipside four years in a row and every year it takes on new and exciting shapes and colors . This ever changing art piece is lots of fun for whom ever wants to partake. It’s truly simple –  just pick up some yarn, loop it around the frame, and throw it to a friend on the opposite side, loop it again around frame and throw it again.  Make a dream catcher or spell your name the possibilities are endless. This year we added dancing lights and music.  But most of all have fun.