Sunday 1 December 2013

River of Light

So here are some more pictures of what went on behind the scenes of the lantern festival.


The 24 foot high sculpture- the structure was welded together by local artist, David Powell, who was running the project. We sewed on the pieces of cloth, in a checkered fashion to replicate the look of a Helter Sketler


something like the one above- ah the pretty colours! but we were going to burn the one made for the lantern festival...


this is the rest of the Helter Skelter- the base. And lovely Katerina sewing cloth quite lovingly onto the structure..
This happened all in the afore mentioned barn- the weather was decidedly unfriendly and the elements were against us for sure. Cold, weary, numb and at 12.30am, I called it a night. But the rest of the crew kept at it for another hour or so...
The plan was to burn these sculptures on the beach on the night of the lantern festival but because of the awful wind and rain, the burning was cancelled...Just as the fuse was lit for the Helter Skelter, the wind picked up, sweeping the 24foot high structure off the sand and onto its side- it rolled towards the audience and we all ran towards it to push it back towards the sea.
My leg got tangled in one of the ropes (soaked in petroleum) attached to the structure and i almost got pulled along with the entire thing- luckily the rope snapped off and I remained unscathed :P


Dad showed up to see what we were doing and wanted to pose...



And here we are making the 8 foot high fire sculptures- which were supposed to be lit, arranged around the Helter Skelter... and once again because of the awful weather on the night they never were. So soul destroying to do all this work and never getting to see the end result! The meta cuboids were covered with chiken wire and secured with sack ties- and that potato sack tying thing- AMAZING (man, i'm such a nerd to get excited about things like this but it was a useful tool) We made partitions in the cuboids and filled them with hay- the partition in the middle prevented the hay to settle at the bottom, therefore, giving a more even burn...in theory...

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