A good friend of mine at Boing Boing, David Pescovitz wrote this great article for Make Magazine about the giant snail Kyrsten and I made.
Thanks to our wonderful friends who made it possible to make this artful creature come alive.
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The Golden Mean will be showing here this weekend.
I can’t wait to see what Ford thinks of my new 2009 model.
Sacramento International Auto Show – November 6-9, 2008
Cal Expo Fairgrounds
Sacramento, California
Over 500,000 square feet of Indoor and Outdoor Display Space Featuring 36 Manufacturers with Hundreds of 2008 Cars in a Non-Selling Environment
Presented by: Central Valley New Car Dealers Association
Tickets Available at the Door
$9 for Adults; Children 12 and Under are Free
$2-off coupons available at all Central Valley New Car Dealer Members and participating Golden 1 Credit Union locations
We set up the car yesterday and got a chance to look around. We were disappointed to see most of the new cars still only get high teens/low twenty’s for gas millage. I’m still amazed and saddened that my 1958 DKW gets better millage than a Prius 50 years later!
Here is a taste of the show
The SS Alpha Fox and our new car the Golden Mean.
It was great to get both the cars out for this annual event. I loved the crowd and the response we got was over the top. The entire parade route was nothing but claps and cheers! Zolie wasn’t sure what to think and spent most of the parade just staring at all this attention with a blank face.
No fire this year as Berkeley city continues to make this event watered down with drugs, bad politics, naked people, but no beer (unless your in the fenced area), fire or free thinking art.
The Wong and Chan Family joined us!
We were swarmed with questions and congratulations from the crowd.
Next we went over to Harrod Blank’s opening of his new film at the Cerrito Speakeasy Theater.
The Artcar Fest is put on every year by Philo and is a wonderful event with so many great art cars and people.
Flicker photo’s of the snail
The Oakland Tribune stopped by to do a story on the snail. We had great fun telling Elizabeth Pfeffer why and how we made the snail.
Full story and pictures are here
A story at the Contra Costa Times too!
The next day Make magazine came by to do a shoot for one of their upcoming issues!
Our good friend David Pescovitz from Boing Boing is doing the article
Sam, Bronca, and Vanessa did a great photo shoot and I can’t wait to see the great pictures of Zolie my daughter and us.
turning the camera on them
After a very early morning photo shoot of the snail, while trying to find someone who was serving pancakes, Lisa and I are approached by a guy on a Segway wondering if we have 110v power on board the snail. He asked if it could run a vacuum cleaner and would we like a ride in his helicopter. I stepped out of the car to make sure I understood his request and quickly said yes. I followed him back to his camp to pick up gear, friends and our tip…
While they were loading, a couple of clean guys got in wearing Enron shirts and tossed in this neatly stacked $50,000 bundle of cash! I grabbed it and thanked them for our tip. They laughed, took our picture and then showed us the center was all ones.
I stopped by camp to pick Kyrsten up (took a slick tongue to get her out of bed that early) and 20 min later we are vacuum cleaned and seat belted in.
Paul, the guy who stopped us, and the snail in our prop wash.
These guys brought out a plane too. Here it is after they crashed it a few days before. As we head straight at the side of Trego mountain and pull up just in time to barely make it over the top, we are starting to wonder if we should have said yes to this ride. I found out after the ride that Lisa is terrified of flying!
One of the interesting things I saw from the air was the large dune we kept hitting riding the snail around that week. You can clearly see it in this picture as a dark fuzzy line running from the bottom left, though the camps, twords Trego mountain (looks like a road). Turns out this is where last years trash fence was! I took a look at aerial shots (see below) once I got home and you can see many years of scars left from having the event out there. I think this is a great event, but I wish there was a more open dialog with burners and BM about the damage being done. The combination of lack of rain and years of BM is why this years event was so dusty. This event leaves a huge trace, what are the real impacts on this area and how long will the desert take to recover?
What a ride! Thanks Paul and crew!
Well we are finally here. The Snail is a BIG hit and everyone loves it. Our DMV shifts helping people register their cars went so smooth and visiting with people there is one of the highlights of my trip. The dust is bad, but one of the best nights was riding around with Kyrsten and Merrilee on bikes and running into wonderful snapshots of playa life that faded away with the next brown out and rain. Everyone out seems happy and ghost like alive in their dusty best.
The Girls loved the snail. Merrilee has story time in it each afternoon.
Our camps round up of Art Cars.
Kyrsten and I dusty and happy burn night
Moths caught in our 500 watt spotlight. We’re having so much fun lighting up everything with it!
Fire!
Morning on the playa
See you at home, back in West Oakland!
This photo says it all for me. Our faces are clear and somber and the snail is a little shaky.
It’s now 4am on Sunday (our plan was to leave on Sat. am) we are loaded and have manage to add some of the little things that later in the trip we will all be glad we took the extra time to do. The upgrades include: the palanquin, a chain to keep the door in the open position while driving, a 1 watt radio station, stairs/ladder to get into the palanquin, a rear view mirror, 500watt Navy spot light, a dash compass, and the Sound of the Golden Mean. The car looks great, drives amazingly well, and everything seems to work. Most of us have not slept more than a few hours for the past 2-3 days and we have just finished a 18 hour work day.
Off we go with high hopes of reaching our camp late Sunday am.
A few miles into our trip and the rear tire on the van blows and throws rubber all over the freeway. Our only spare fits the front, so we change the front tire, place it on the rear only to discover the other rear is flat too. We manage to drive a 100 feet more before gravity takes over. AAA arrives just after dawn to tow us to a station. It’s Sunday and the only tire store that will be open is Firestone and they don’t open for 2 more hours!
Firestone was not helpfull and honestly rude about our now tire less van on their door step. I did get a chance to use their bathroom and make a call to West Oakland’s J&O tires.
James hooked us up with a new set of Firestone tires (the ones Firestone said they were out of), and did it in style, completed by hand, and heavy Metal rock (full blast) right in front of Firestone and Sears at 10am. The flag on his truck was a reminder of the real “Spirit of America”. Security made a few stops by to see how long we planned to camp there, and we assured them we would be gone by weeks end. Yes we were home!
One more stop in Reno. Right in front of the worst section of cement lined hwy the van blew another tire. Lauren saved the day, using all of her race experience, and steered a front tire blow out though an exit. More rubber flew, this time right into our windshield. The second we stop Kyrsten was on the phone with Pep Boys arranging tires, Christopher was unloading the spare and I had the front tire off. We were a well oiled crew. The adrenaline was still flowing when we hit the road and headed for Pep Boys. 5pm
With 4 new tires we finally pull off the freeway at Fernely to get gas.
We arrived at Gerlach at 9pm, 17 hours on the road! We loaded up Christopher’s trailer, got water and dropped the snail at our friend Don’s house for the night. We thought the next part of getting though the gate into Burning Man would be easy. Turns out that the passes we and most of DMV got, had no bar code on them. We were sent though the line 3 times. Each time being told that what ever the last person said was wrong, and what does this mark on your window mean? We resorted to Jedi mind tricks and started telling everyone the mark meant we could get in. It worked! and after 4 hours, with a early arrival pass, and our 2 year old (she had the best mind control tricks), we got in. 21 hours door to door.
Well almost, but we still have some details to finish before we head out to Burning Man.
Lots of late nights with little or no sleep.
Jon Sarriugarte, a blacksmith and fire artist, makes adjustments to the flame-emitting feelers on the front of The Golden Mean, his snail-shaped art car.
Story and photos by Emily Lang
OAKLAND, California — In a project that would make Franz Kafka grin, a 40-year-old bug has metamorphosed into a snail. The resulting creation, an art car called The Golden Mean, is a golden gastropod that glows in the dark and shoots rings of fire from its feelers. It also seats six comfortably.
Blacksmith Jon Sarriugarte, who fabricates custom home furnishings, worked with his wife, Kyrsten Mate, to transform a 1966 VW Bug into the rolling piece of art. The Golden Mean is making its debut at the Burning Man art festival this year.
Mate says she literally dreamed up the concept.
“I woke up and said, ‘We have to build this giant snail,'” she said. “It totally wasn’t planned. This whole project has been weird coincidences and math.”
The visually stunning vehicle takes its name from the golden ratio, a mathematical proportion that’s said to produce aesthetically pleasing art and architecture. The spiral in the snail’s shell is shockingly close to the ratio. Other inspirations for the project include the giant pink snail from Doctor Dolittle, giant mechanical elephant puppets by Royal de Luxe and Jules Verne’s imaginative creations.
Here’s a peek at last-minute preparations that took place in Sarriugarte’s Form & Reform shop before Golden Mean headed off for its date with the playa.
