I constructed this image from some photos I had taken at Burning Man in 2008. Holly was pregnant with Jonahven, and the temple was stunning. The whole trip was stellar, accept that our friends that didn’t have tickets got stuck in Gerlach all week. They thought they could work their way in somehow, but that didn’t work out.
I had named this piece Desert Queen, which is nice enough, but today I saw that I had actually named the file Love Is Real. “Love Is Real” is what the piece of art said on the temple face, and I’m sure Holly would say that that essentially sums up her outlook on this thing we’re doing around here. Love is real, that’s about it.
The piece also includes an image of Holly’s own art work, which is in the bottom left hand corner. This was taken by someone else when she was doing an exhibit and live painting at the Mystic Garden Party of 2010.
It was a challenge balancing the neon colors, the light and dark, and working with the element of chaos. For the theme and the general mood within the piece, I think it communicates what it needs to. I used one of Holly’s Facebook status updates for the text, and made a swirled version of it behind it to give it that “swirling into reality feeling”. There are two images of the temple: one during the day and one the same evening when they burned it down. I love the depth as the one during the day is behind her and the one burning in front, and then the texture of fire blending with the color of the main portrait’s skin color. I used three of the same image of Holly. Finding the third is always fun and, again, offers a feeling of depth. You also may notice that there is a non-burning version of the temple in the very front. The man that appears to be walking center/right in front of it is actually from the image behind it of the burning temple. The fuchsia on Holly’s face is one of the spires from the temple that I allowed to bleed through and colored.
I think my favorite parts are the up-close version of Holly with the indistinguishable words “Love Is Real” in blown out, neon blue lettering over her forehead, and the over-saturated version of the temple in the top right hand corner.
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Original Images
