Burning Man 2014’s Temple of Grace by David Best + other art grants announced

One of the highlights of Burning Man for many including me is the Temple.Visiting the Temple has always been an important part of my Burning Man experience. First erected by David Best in 2000 and for many subsequent years, it lies just beyond the Man and is burned the final night, Sunday before Labor Day, generally at sunset.

In 2002, Marsh and I spoke with David Best and expressed our appreciation for his work. In 2005, one of the best moments of that Burn was watching the Temple at sunset with my three year old son, husband, and nephew.

Pictured behind this portrait of my family is the Temple of Transition from 2011 built in Reno, Nevada by Chris “Kiwi” Hankins, Diarmaid “Irish” Horkan and Ian “Beave.”  Even in this image you can tell it is a HUGE structure: a 120-foot tiered, hexagonal central tower, surrounded by five 58-foot tiered, hexagonal towers.  Read other posts about previous Temples here for 2011 and here for 2010 and here for 2009.

This year’s Temple, The Temple of Grace, is, once again, the creation of David Best from Petaluma CA.

The building of the Temple, like the Man and a few other large scale projects on the Playa, is funded in part by ticket sales.

Believe it or not, most of the art you see at Burning Man (or in a Burning Man video like Home or this one of “The Place’s You’ll Go” by Dr Seuss) is NOT funded via ticket sales but by the individuals and the camps that created it.

These days, crowd sourcing social media campaigns such as Kickstarter play important roles. This year, the Black Rock Arts Foundation is providing fiscal sponsorship as a pilot project to help Burning Man artists raise necessary funds for their art by enabling tax-deductible contributions to their projects (see the link below the Temple description).