BEACH BURN

      I was honored to be an artist at yesterday's Love Burn, an evening of music, fire, and poetry on the beach at Virginia Key.

    It was a six hour mini-version of the Nevada's annual Burning Man Gathering and an O,Miami Poetry Festival event.

   Like the big one in the desert, there were sculptures and costumed participants. I drew bad portraits, an art form I have perfected over many years.

  

 




I enjoyed drawing Sam the best.  His smile was infectious. 

Here's the moment when I handed him his drawing. 



   I love my two-minute chats as I draw new friends. 
    Most had never been to Burning Man and I explained, "See the wings burning behind me? They're three feet tall. At Burning Man they'd rise up thirty feet.  The flames would core a hole in the sky and probably sear your eye brows".
 
   When I got home l  learned Larry Harvey, the 70-year-old visionary who started Burning Man, had died a few hours earlier. I knew he'd had a stroke three weeks ago. One of his many friends sent this out,
 

         Larry was never one for labels. He didn’t fit a mold; he broke it with the way he lived his life. He was 100% authentic to his core. For all of us who knew or worked with him, he was a landscape gardener, a philosopher, a visionary, a wit, a writer, an inspiration, an instigator, a mentor, and at one point a taxi driver and a bike messenger. He was always a passionate advocate for our culture and the principles that emanate from the Burning Man experience in the Black Rock Desert.

As he told one of us recently, Larry liked to create “scenes” that made people consider the world in a new way. He was extraordinarily successful at doing just that.

The Burning Man Project has lost our original Founder.

   I've drawn bad portraits in the desert for the last two years. I never had a chance to draw Larry's. If I had, I expect it would have made him smile.