from the Chicago Tribune, September 6, 1999

Creativity burns bright in the desert
For the 24,000 people at the annual Burning Man gathering, a spirit of individuality is fueled by the impermanence of it all.

WASHOE COUNTY, Nev, -- First a pop, then a blast of smoke and fire, and the Burning Man statue lived up to its name. Surrounding the 50-foot-tall effigy of a man Saturday night, tens of thousands cheered the flames higher.

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Fatima Mowat, a student from Seattle, wearing a silver Mylar wig, a multicolored glow-necklace and a really large grin. "Of course, I've said that ever since I got to Burning Man."

The 1999 Burning Man festival exploded on Nevada's Black Rock desert as an estimated 24,000 people ignored extreme heat, cold and winds for music, art and dance as well as nudity, mud and, of course, fire.

Held 100 miles north of Reno, Burning Man defies description, but is billed as North America's largest outdoor arts festival. The destruction of the namesake statue is one of the only events planned by organizers. Just about everything else, from a gigantic motorized bed-car, to a dance club held in a three-story wooden likeness of actor Sean Connery's head, are all built and brought by attendees.

After the torching of the wooden man, artists toss their paintings, sculptures and other creations on the bonfire -- or make their own -- to reinforce the celebration of art for art's sake.

Inspired after attending last year, Todd Dworkin had an idea for a complicated psychedelic maze that he could set up in the middle of the desert. Dworkin, a San Francisco builder who usually designs and construction single family homes, wanted to create "connection between strangers."

His maze, with its narrow hallways and multiple dead-ends was one of the top attractions of the festival, with hundreds squeezing past each other and getting lost each night.

Melissa French, an Oakland ceramist, spent weeks construction a 10-foot-long sculpture of a mermaid out of paper mache, wood and wire. "I like the impermanence," she said. "I built it for the desert; it wouldn't look right anywhere else." Plus, she adds, burning it means she "doesn't have to haul it back."

Festival founder Larry Harvey sees Burning Man as an "opportunity for expression" that isn't available anywhere else. Harvey began the festival in 1985, when an 8-foot-tall figure of a man was burned on a beach near San Francisco. He moved the festival to the desert a few years later.

As the statue grew, the attendance grew, and the art exhibits began to sprout up. Pointing to installations as diverse as a little field hockey ring brought by a group of Canadians and a full-size submarine sculpture that appears to be breaking through the ground, Harvey said "normal societal rules are suspended here, so creativity thrives."

Harvey resists comparisons with festivals like Woodstock.

"Woodstock was just a music concert. It's remember for the spontaneous behavior of the crowd.." At Burning Man, he said, the crowd provides the show.

But as the Woodstock anniversary concert turned violent when attendees felt it was too big and expensive, similar concerns cloud the modern, maturing Burning Man. This year attracted 10,000 more people than 1998's festival.

Washoe County Sheriff's Lt. Will McHardy said only five arrests had been made at the weeklong event as of Saturday evening. Three were drug-related.

McHardy said the only major problem has been the 80 to 90 people a day who have required medical treatment after taking certain drugs at the event.

"There's too many people," said Oakland, Calif., web designer Tammy Berger, who camped at the far corner of the tents, trucks and RVs crowding most of the 3 1/2 mile Burning Man site. "It's overwhelming," she said. "You can't feel part of something this big."

With size comes need for order and an end to much of Burning Man's supposed anarchy. Increased security, a $100 entrance fee to cover cleanup and facilities, and rules ranging from a public mud-bathing ban to speed limits has many longtime participants grumbling.

"It's lame," said Reno resident Dale Marlowe as a Washoe County Sheriff's Humvee flashed its headlights into an all-night rave. "If I wanted this much surveillance, I'd have stayed in the city."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

We all live in a desert submarine...
(1999, Eric Lipton)

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Burning Man 1999 photo gallery