I am back in Austin after a brief trip to Houston for the Houston Art Nerds Salon #8: Effigy. Road travel is hard on my fibromyalgia and so I have been avoiding long trips, but this was their first salon of the year and a special one — an almost all-night event combining our usual art salons with a miniature Burning Man style effigy Burn.
It was a real pleasure to see so many of my Houston family-of-choice and to reconnect with a group I helped found last year. I think it’s so important to set aside time where there is nothing else to do but make art — sure we socialize and network and talk about projects, but there is lots of time in a month to bullshit about art we might make someday. The Salons allow us to be surrounded by others working on art as well.
The mini-burn was beautiful of course. Many people participated by writing on a piece of paper the things they wanted to destroy from 2010 and tossed it into the fire; this felt very cathartic for me. There were a lot of wonderful things about 2010 but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot I wanted to dispose of as well.
Here’s a small gallery of shots I took during the Burn. Like last time, use the FS button to turn on full screen mode.
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My pet accompanied me back to Austin in time to join me at another salon: the Austin Art Nerds salon being held tomorrow. Though there won’t be fire, we will be making art — and pussy prints! If you’re in Austin and you are creative, make stuff or do art, you should join us.