Watching Womantree Grow: Valerie Mallory’s 2024 Burning Man Honorarium Project
Womantree 2024 at night in Black Rock City, NV
Made from casts of real women, Womantree “is a meditation on the lives and legacy of women, their stories, and our connection to them,” says Burning Man Honorarium artist Valerie Mallory. While this is the 10 year anniversary of the Womantree concept, “every time Womantree goes up, it’s necessarily different than the first one,” said Valerie. “It’s not made from a template; it grows organically.” Womantree grew first in Nevada in 2014, then in Sacramento and Utah in 2023, and in San Francisco at Vesuvio in April 2024.
Valerie Mallory growing Womantree at Burning Man 2024
Valerie explained that the figures that comprise Womantree are different for different reasons. Every time she sees the component parts, she sees it differently. ”Everytime I make it, it’s a brand new one,” she noted. People who see it are different, it’s in a different environment, made with the help of different people: all these factors combine to make it unique each time.
Valerie Mallory building Womantree at Burning Man 2024
“People help me decide where the figures should go,” she continued. “Some of the pieces are the same, but positioned differently. But the concept of it is still the same and still powerful.”
Womantree is “a plant,” Valerie said. “Every time a plant grows, it changes it. It’s the same thing but different.”
The top of Valerie Mallory’s Womantree looking up from below
Valerie first attended Burning Man in 1998, and she started showing work in the Center Cafe at Burning Man in 1999– the same year she interviewed founder Larry Harvey. In 2014, the Cafe said they thought it was time to bring her art to the playa– that she had outgrown the Center Cafe. “They said just try it,” remembers Valerie. “They said it’d be a different experience for you.” She was scared she said, but it pushed her and she’s grown as an artist. While she works as a nurse, she studied art and literature in college getting degrees in each. She chose nursing as a career that would allow her the flexibility to pursue her art.
Valerie Mallory at work 2024
Valerie subsequently brought larger installations to Burning Man eight times starting in 2014; this is her second honorarium from the Burning Man Project to help fund bringing her art to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada about two hours northeast of Reno.
night detail of Womantree 2024
North Beach’s Vesuvio Cafe presented new works by Bay Area painter and sculptor Valerie Mallory from Friday April 5 to Sunday April 28, 2024. Valerie’s Vesuvio show also featured about 20 paintings and portraits of real people as well as people from Valerie’s imagination. Her installations at Burning Man have evolved to include more and more of her two dimensional art. Her paintings at Burning Man are larger than life portraits but at Vesuvio, she showed more intimate works. Funds raised went to bringing Womantree to Burning Man in August 2024. Learn more at https://womantree.art/. An installation of Valerie’s “Womantree” was on view in Jack Kerouac Alley between Vesuvio and City Lights Bookstore on the final day offering a preview of her 2024 Burning Man honorarium project for the annual event in the Black Rock Desert at the end of August.
Valerie Mallory’s 2024 Womantree includes a few casts of men. but it’s mostly women
Valerie explained to me that the figures that comprise Womantree are different for different reasons. Every time she sees the component parts, she sees it differently. ”Everytime I make it, it’s a brand new one.” People who see it are different, it’s in a different environment, made with the help of different people: all these factors combine to make it unique each time.
Reed aka Bolt and Clay aka Huey securing eletrical wire at Womantree 2024 Burning Man
The team this year on playa included my son who traveled from where he lives near Tahoe to the Black Rock Desert on Tuesday Aug 20 meeting Valerie and other members of the team out there at the installation’s site at 6:45 and off the Esplanade toward the Man. First of course was setting up their own camps with shelter and shade, then shade structure and work space for the art project. My son and his friend Clay built the towers pictured above and then the gate, and then helped Val wherever she needed help. A number of people worked day and night through 40mph and rain too to get the installation. It was almost complete by Saturday night, and finished and lit on Sunday night with all evidence of all the hard work taken off playa.
Women in trees surround Valerie Mallory’s Womantree in 2024 at Burning Man
This year, Womantree is surrounded by a forest of women in trees, like this one during the night above and the day below:
women in trees surround Womantree 2024
Below is another of the woman trees; this cast was originally at the top of “Playful Again” and is a cast of a 2022 build crew member.
Diana shoots the man or the moon?
In this election year, for me it is powerful and empowering to think about Womantree as depicting how we as women support each other, hold each other up, and together we rise up to higher heights. We are able to do today what we can because of what our sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers did to get us here.
Read more about the early days of Burning Man from a depth psychological and an ecopsychological POV:
- Part 1: Burning Man 1992-02–The Shadow Grows: Journey Into Community Soul Making
- Part 2: how to integrate the shadow
- Part 3: using the 10 Principles to create a new economy
A final closing reminder: “Every time Womantree goes up it’s necessarily different than the first one because it’s not a template, it’s not made from a template, it grows organically,” Valerie told me. The figures are different for different reasons she explained. “Every time you see it you see a brand new one. Every time I make it it’s a brand new one. But the concept of it still the same and still powerful.”
Just like Black Rock City. Each time we make it it is the same but different.
Just like Burning Man. Some of the people are the same, some are new, but together we build this city and make it special, the same but unique.
Just like YOU?? How are you the same and yet new each day?
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