burning man Archives - Mardi Storm

Sea horses… ride the waves into deep waters. Pulling chariots or dancing in sea foam, these horses have captivated our imaginations for thousands of years. One of the earliest Grecian relics was a seahorse. Hippo is Greek for “horse” and kampos means “sea monster”, and its the name I use for these majestic beasts.

Hippocampus was first seen at Burning Man in 2002 and was a thematic piece for that year. It was my 3rd sculpture to put on the Playa. It also was put on display at Google HQ in Mt. View for a few years, at Burning Man Headquarters on 3rd street for a few years, and at Russian River Winery for a few years. This sea horse has been to quite a few festivals as well, including Treasure Island Music Festival, Decompression, and more.

The Mystery of the Unicorn, a symbol for our culture

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Twilight Anima Rising emerged in a dream, apparently tapping into the collective unconscious before the surge in popularity of the unicorn, debuting at an event of 60,000. Why now? Why this unicorn? Humankind has always been looking for the magic bullet, and the unicorn’s horn was said to cure every illness, and to purify poisoned water… so knights and kings went chasing unicorns for centuries in the Middle Ages. (It’s nice of the Nordic travelers to give them norwal horns to egg them on.)

This unicorn rose up out of the earth itself, with hundreds of tiny reflective mirrors on its horn – as if to say – “is this what you are looking for? What is the magic in this horn? You are.” For its only us who can solve the world’s problems, turn our poisoned waters clean again, and cure the illness we bring to our land. And the time is now.

Who in their right mind would make a 10 foot high unicorn at a time when unicorns were hugely unpopular? (Oh, I heard about it, I spent 12 hours mudding this creature… and had tough men as new convert unicorn lovers.) This kind of message isn’t what you would call popular, not 15 years ago. The time is now to recognize there are no panaceas. We have to face the shadow of humanity and our relationship to the earth, right now, ourselves. We can’t expect miracles to save us and magic horns.

And, unicorns are finally cool again. As they should be. They’re a very potent and powerful archetypal energy!

The beginnings of making large wild art: the Pegasus

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Did I mention how I got involved making sculpture at Burning Man? When I moved to San Francisco in 1999 I heard about this fantastic art festival, and, determined to go. I was completely blown away by the levels of creativity I experienced, a place where people “made anything out of anything”. I decided right then and there I’d make something, too.

One of my original horse sculptures was the Pegasus, which is either flying out of the ground or sinking into it, depending who you are talking to, their mood, state of mind, and whether they tend to see the glass is half full or half empty: