2015 Art Grants Awards

Photography by Levi Kill

2015 ART GRANTS AWARDS ANNOUNCED

Mosaic Experiment’s Art Grant Committee is pleased to announce the following 2015 Art Grants awardees. Thank you all for your hard work, participation, and vision. Giving out funds for art is probably the best job around!

As you can see, most grants were not funded in their entirety. Help our fellow artists out! Click the donate button next to any description to donate directly to that project. If you’d like to donate to ALL the projects (your donation will be divided evenly), donate here:

Donate Button Our temporary home in the cosmos of Reclaim is being built slowly, art project by art project … we can’t wait to see the magic you all create.

LARGE ART GRANTS

DEFIANT PHOENIX by Joel Lam Defiant Phoenix will represent a bird, a symbol of “Defying Gravity”. The bird will be more of a skeleton, with straight sticks of wood representing its feathers. It’s wings spread wide, as though emerging from the flames and beginning it’s ascent to the heavens. This installation is a reminder that we can soar high above the challenges of life. This phoenix is defiant; she burns brightly, gives warmth, follows her own path, and soars higher than anyone says she should. She’s also a constant survivor. Budget: $1,000 | Granted: $550

Donate Button

REFLECTIONS by Jaime Robbins R DrawingReflections is a swinging pergola. This structure accomplishes this feeling of weightlessness, happiness and flying while being safe for burner participants to hang out on and reflect. Hanging from the roof of the pergola will be many small mirrors medallions reflecting the light from the LEDs that will also be added to the structure. The effect should be something similar to floating around in space, staring up at the stars. Budget: $970 | Granted: $550

Donate Button

TEMPLE OF UNOBTAINABLE EXPECTATIONS by Kristal Light Temple of Unobtainable Expectations highlights the fact that expectations are all around us and in our daily life. We really do take for granted that things will always be the way they are now and they won’t be. Each moment in time is different than another. There is no going back, only forward. So, why not go forward with a new direction? The direction of healing. The artist’s goal is to help transmute the energy of guilt of expectation into a loving remembrance of who we really are. When we free ourselves of expectation, we make more room to express more love and joy. This art project will be a structure you walk into and experience the messages the project has to show through the well thought out art. Able to be walked into in small groups. Budget: $679 | Granted: $300

Donate Button

MEDIUM ART GRANTS

CLOUD CITY P.O. by Bill Fisher CCPO DrawingCloud City P.O. allows the Mosaic community to live outside the box, “Defying Gravity”, by creating a mailbox from which they may mail postcards to their future selves. Participants will be able to create a personal message they will mail to themselves to be delivered in the future. Participants can be as creative as they want with the postcards. They will be able to draw, color and write whatever they wish. If a participant does not want to include their address or does not have an address, they can address it to the universe. It will still be mailed out, so it is delivered in the eyes of the participant. This installation hopes to inspire the Mosaic community to think about where they are in the world, with themselves or with others. To look within themselves and take notice of the aspects they would like to see evolved. To set small goals for themselves. Or even to simply say hi to their future selves and put a smile on their faces.

Preprinted postcards, pens, crayons and markers will be provided. Names and addresses will NOT be used for ANY other purpose. The mailbox will be participatory 24 hours a day. It will be lit up on the inside and the outside at night by battery powered E.L. Wire. The postcards will be mailed out at a time no longer than one year later. Budget: $330 | Granted: $250

Donate Button

CAMP FYS BURNER SURVIVAL TINS by Jaime Robbins Camp ‘Fix Your Shit’ is offering up Burner SurvivaFYSST Picturel Tins made out of recycled Altoid tins. The outside of the tin will be spray painted to look like a miniature galaxy/starscape and will say Mosaic 2015. Anyone can visit our camp and build a tin, which includes first aid supplies, sewing supplies, ear plugs, mini lights, nail trimmers, mylar blankets, etc. It’s a little bit of functional art for participants to take with them to use again and again. Budget: $300 | Granted: $175

Donate Button

TAKE MY HAND by Katelin Fisher Take My Hand was inspired by incredibly fond memories of one participants dad walking into a room with a tune or hum on his lips and spontaneously twirling her mom or one of the kids around and sharing a dance­ be it a swing, slow, bluegrass, funk­ and then letting it end as quickly as it came on with zero awkwardness. For about 60­ -120 seconds at a time, they were engaged with one another and having fun, no preamble, no time limit, but definitely smiling. At burns, participants often hope that they will be able to share the same kind of sentiment in their interactions with new friends and old family alike...spontaneous moments of meaningful engagement. Take My Hand intends to create a space that facilitates these interactions. Imagine as you are on one of your walking adventures to check out what Mosaic is doing, with a person you are happy to have in that moment­ a friend, a lover, a parent/child/brother/sister, a new acquaintance, a crush, a recent stranger­ and you frolic across a stand alone space where you can sweep in and out of a dance at both of your wills. Maybe it makes you nervous, and maybe it gives you butterflies, maybe it feels like the most natural thing in the world... sway back and forth all night or until the end of the song.

Take My Hand, either we’ll tether each other to Mosaic or we’ll float away together. Budget: $191 | Granted: $175

Donate Button

THE OFFICE by Robert Kolb The Office is an experiment in alternative realities, perceptions, learning, and interpersonal communication through highly interactive experiences. The Office is a replica office setting from 1972 complete with file cabinets, desk, phone, water cooler, and more. The concept is blending the burner world with the default world, a world from the past. There will be board meetings, office parties, company picnic, and cutting edge industry discussions. Budget: $333.22 | Granted: $250

Donate Button

TOAST & JAMS by Carrie Myers TJ DrawingToast & Jams is meant to be a fun activity to bring people together to bond over food and music. This will be a multi-session occurrence, each taking place for approximately 1 hour of toast making/eating and music appreciation. A small portable boombox will be used for playing music and will be quiet enough to encourage conversation. Lanterns and battery powered lights will be used for any night time toasts. This will not be a visually remarkable art project, but rather is meant to be interactive. Careful thought will go into the selection of food and music selective to encourage and provoke conversations. Budget: $270 | Granted: $150

Donate Button

FULLY FUNDED ART GRANTS

BROKEN DOLL MINUET by Highwire Broken Doll Minuet brings one burner’s joy and energy of hook suspensions to the burner community. Hook suspension helped the artist in some trying times, eventually turning her into the strong individual she is now and helped in her discovering the burner community & friends. She would love to share a hook suspension with the community at Mosaic Experiment and would love for this to be an experience that not only she enjoys. She wants to share the energy she feels is understood by others. Budget: $150 | Granted: $150

PACK PACK by Kat Pope BEWARE!!! A werewolf is on the loose at Mosaic! One ‘bite’ and you’ll find yourself transformed into a werewolf yourself. This lone wolf is looking for participants to become part of her pack at Mosaic Experiment.

PkPk Heads PicMoon Moon the lone wolf will be making at least 6 wolf heads and tails to ‘turn’ ordinary participants into moon howling werewolves that roam the streets of Mosaic (and beyond). It’s her way of expressing Immediacy, self-expression, and participation. Moon Moon wants to share her love of being a wolf and to embrace your inner wolfness, run around, and howl at the moon.

Ultimately, Moon Moon is hoping that her wolves will want to make other wolves and that someday she’ll go to a burn and meet a werewolf she doesn’t know. That would be epic. The process used to make these wolves has become fairly streamlined, and uses easily ­replicated patterns. Moon Moon is working on making an instructional video so that anyone can do this themselves, but for now she’s the only werewolf­ making person around. Budget: $125 | Granted: $125

UV PHOTO BOOTH by Josh Kaplon UV Photo Booth is an interactive shadow booth. It is an 8’x8’ screen covered in a UV reactive material. A custom built 100W UV light to charge the screen allowing participants to pose in front of the screen and take temporary silhouette photos. Props like hats and other things that can make interesting outlines will be provided. There will also be various UV flashlights and laser pointers available to draw on the outlines and add detail to the photos. Budget: $100 | Granted: $100

YOUTH AR T GRANT

PICTURE PLANET by Miles Asselin PP DrawingPicture Planet is a round ball like you can crawl inside and draw things inside. But the outside is painted like a planet. And there are lights inside, with batteries for night that make it glow and you can do the art at night. You can draw things that fly on go in the air on the top and things that are on the ground in the bottom. One grown up or 2 kids can fit inside and use the markers to draw. My family will help me bring it there and make it work.

Parent’s note: We are planning on creating a sphere using multiple size rings of thin pvc pipe, then covering the structure with tarps that will be prepainted on the outside. Budget: $50 | Granted: $50 (FULLY FUNDED)


omg!OMG! Immediacy Grant: Anti-Gravity Elixirs by Helen Arth Anti-­gravity elixirs aim to challenge the force of attraction by which our bodies fall toward the center of the Earth. The consumption of anti­-gravity elixirs are the gates of which to enter an alternate world of possible impossibilities. By creating possible impossibilities, we enable ourselves to lose touch with the physical laws of attraction that bind us to reality, and unhinge fantasies of weightless existence of which evoke transformative change. Budget:  $230 | Granted:  $150

MOTHERSHIP LOVE: The Story of our Effigy

MothershipInterview"Mothership Love" is Mosaic Experiment's official effigy for 2015, selected by our Art Grants Committee because its design so perfectly fits this year's theme "Defying Gravity." Thaddeus "Osito" Micelli

This week we've been fortunate to get a few moments with Osito (Thaddeus Micelli), project manager/coordinator of the effigy team, to discuss the inspiration and efforts involved in making this artistic dream become reality. The effigy team is hard at work designing and prototyping what will soon be the final centerpiece we set fire to Saturday evening during Mosaic.

Where you living these days, Osito? Osito: Ypsilanti, Michigan

When was the first burn you ever attended? My first burn was Lakes of Fire 2013: Superstition. My wife Kyrie and I found out about the burner community from a friend who had gone the previous year to Lakes of Fire.

humblebeginnings

Tell us a little bit about your effigy project, Mothership Love: Mothership Love is a kinetic art piece that gives a peek into the wonder of space and the universe, and offers to teleport you away. We want to truly defy gravity and show the rotation of the planets. For years, we at Mothership Love have sent out a signal into the night sky, across all frequencies, and through all known languages, and we have finally heard back. For the first time, we bring visitors from another world to our planet’s humble surface.

What inspired you to build it? For me this piece comes from a yearning to continue creating art within this culture. It is very much a culmination of the past three years of my life and this adventure being a 'burner'.  After the Tree of Life, my wife and I started small with our first theme camp (Treasure Island), evolved into our first art grant/project (Snatch-n-Balls) and escalated to creating the effigy for Mosaic. This community continues to show what is truly possible when the right energy is put into this reality. I only wish to continue this tradition and inspire the next person to shoot for the stars.

How much time have you put into creating the effigy so far? It's really hard to put an exact amount of time. It all sort of starts to blend together. A number of hours have been spent just in group conversation discussing schematics, issues, organizing events, etc. Every weekend since we were granted the effigy has been spent at one of our build sites and will continue throughout the month of September.

Fundraising, although easy enough to set up online, takes a lot of time and energy to properly hype/advertise online. Big kudos to the Mosaic leads and volunteers that spend countless hours making sure we all know what's going on!

tgroup

So we know you're not doing this all by yourself.  Who are you collaborating with and what are their roles? None of this would be possible without the help from my core team:

Aiyami (Spidermonkey): Skilled chemist by trade and Fire Lead for our effigy. Excellent knowledge of creating and burning stuff. Methodical burn designs will ensure this is one effigy you will not want to miss. One half of our mad creation team!

David Yates (Total Neglect): Design lead and engineering specialist. Brings years of experience with woodworking and fires. I'm 100% sure that this man could make anything work with enough time and tools. The other half of our mad creation team.

Kyrie Micelli (BrattyCakes): The yin to my yang. Community event organizer and overall human networker. A lot of our presence online and our fundraising event at Necto is due to Kyrie's help along with helping keep me organized and on track. Cannot thank her enough.

Although our core team is small we have been lucky to have others come to our assistance. Necto nightclub in Ann Arbor has been generous enough to offer their downstairs area (the Red Room) for our local fundraiser along with some excellent local talent. Mixtape, one of our DJs for the fundraiser, has also greatly contributed to Mosaic with his image designs and other media that will be released related to the event.

Also, our friend Jon: Our build site would not be possible if not for his generosity (and overall curiosity) of the Mothership Love effigy. The tools and space available have greatly helped in the completion/burning of the scale project and translating that to the main burn. I also have enjoyed an amazing meal or two at their place and I'm humbled by their generosity.

What kind of roadblocks and challenges have you run into so far? One of our biggest challenges is making sure that our burn effects work as we have initially planned. So far, we have successfully recreated this in the scale model and look forward to hammering out the rest. If you're coming to our Mothership Love-raiser, you'll get to see what we mean!

Scale panel (David Kyrie)Other challenges have been organizing people/time to make the builds happen, sourcing parts for the build at a reasonable price, keeping the community engaged and participating and making connects with people who can assist us with some of our harder components. We have been lucky enough to make all of these happen with a little luck and a good amount of hard work. Again, none of this would be possible without the help from the community.

Any words of advice for artists wanting to make their own project for a future Mosaic Experiment? I would definitely not take on such a large project unless you've worked on some other small ones first. The experience our crew gained on our first group project (Tree of Life, Lakes of Fire 2013) and our own personal projects since then have given us the building blocks to base our build and timeline on. It doesn't hurt to know how to use a power tool either.

Be ready to make changes. Things come up. Stuff doesn't fit or pan out. You're going to make a few revisions to your design before it gets burned. The board game Monopoly was revised over forty times before it was up to snuff. It's not a bad thing. It's just evolution. Roll with it.

Have fun! There's a lot of hard work involved in making your dreams a reality but above all make sure you and your team are enjoying what they're doing.

Got a link to your project you want us to send people to? Maybe the fundraiser page? Yup! Mothership Love Indiegogo Page

THAT'S IT, FOLKS! Osito had to go back to work!

For those wanting to help gift this project in either physical or financial ways, we highly recommend you attend the Mothership Love-Raiser this weekend:

MOTHERSHIP LOVE-RAISER Saturday, August 29, 2015 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Necto Nightclub (Red Room) Ann Arbor, Michigan

$10 gets you in the door, and you can meet the Osito and his project team in the flesh, discuss the project, offer to pitch in however you'd like, or just hang out, dance, and have a good time with burner friends supporting a project of burnerly love! Of course, if you can't make it to that, you can always donate your cover (or more!) to to the Mothership Love Indiegogo Page

Mosaic Experiment 2015: SOLD OUT

  MOSAIC MOONAs of Wednesday, August 19th, Mosaic Experiment 2015 has sold out! This is great news for those of us behind the scenes who planned wishlist budgets based on selling 400 Adult tickets. This year we increased Art Grants and Effigy budgets, upped our firewood stock for all, implemented a Low Income Ticket program, gifted Child tickets (12 and under), and now organizers are busy bees getting infrastructure ready to create our community village. How will you defy gravity? Time to prepare!

Did you miss getting your ticket? Check out the Mosaic Ticket Exchange & Rideshare Facebook Group. To transfer your ticket, we recommend calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006. They are super helpful and quick!

DefyingGravityballonsTICKET TRANSFERS INFO: Tickets may be resold through the Brown Paper Tickets network. If you need to sell or transfer a ticket, you must do so through the ticket vendor. Once your ticket has been transferred, Mosaic Experiment will receive notice of the transaction. Beware when buying a ticket from an individual. Only the first occurrence of a ticket code will be honored at the gate. We take no responsibility for tickets sold outside of Brown Paper Tickets.

FIND A TICKET? Awesome! NOW read the Survival Guide. You MUST READ to attend... there will be a quiz!

10 PRINCIPALSSELLING YOUR TICKET? Do your part and make sure the lucky person who buys it understands what they are getting into. It's everyone's job to spread our principles! Download the Survival Guide in PDF, or send them this link along with their ticket info.

WHAT'S NEXT? Start preparing! Get your tents and gear ready for Autumn camping in Ohio. Figure out how you'll radically express yourself - with costumes? Performance Art? Service to the community by volunteering? Start pondering the Ten Principles and how you can deepen your participation this year. What's that crazy creative idea for an impromptu art installation you had? Do it! Want to organize a happy hour, a wandering karaoke tribe, an interactive gravity defying game? GO FOR IT. The experiment only takes off when we all launch it together!

See you on the strip-mine playa!

xoxo

Mosaic Experiment 

2015 Defying Gravity Logo

websitelogobannerIntroducing the Mosaic Experiment 2015 Defying Gravity logo! Skennedy (Scott Kennedy) of Cleveland, Ohio gave his time and talent to craft this logo for use by the community. More on his process and inspiration:

I was asked to do my part in creating a logo for this year's Mosaic Experiment, based on our theme.

We talked about Defying Gravity, and Everyman made some suggestions for how that might look, and I ran with it.

The idea here is that a person with wings has leapt from a ledge, bridge, or tree into the air, surrendering themselves to the wind just before the incredible effort of flying, of resisting the irresistible.

Defying a force of nature is hard work, but there is a joy in that defiance, in controlling your own destiny for as long as you can, even if you know that eventually you will land, and have to start all over.

To me, that is what we do when we carve a space for ourselves to experiment with art and society - often walking a tightrope of regulations designed by the rest of the world to avoid risk and conflict so that we can embrace those things, together.

Without conflict, there can be no change.

And so the Defier pushes away from the cultivated, safe farmland for something stressful, intensely joyful, and all too brief.

Sound familiar?

See you at Mosaic.

--Skennedy

This image is available for any creative project your burny heart desires. Ideas include screen printing, stickers, etchings, engravings... anything you can imagine!  Several file types available here.