Burningman 2020:

the Multiverse

A project from past and present

Building Wire Trees

This is only connected to Burning Man 2020 because I'm writing about these trees at about the same time as I'm getting the bm 2020 page ready for the world.

Wire Trees - 2019 to present (end of March 2020)

I started building wire trees in my homes in the early 1980's. At one time I made a small forest in my living room, brazing joints with a small torch thousands of times over the carpeting to build each tree. The first was built as an arching structure over my work/lounge chair to hang my tools from. It had over a hundred copper circular leaves from an inch to maybe 5" in diameter on the upper branches. Two other trees were quickly added to the living room.

I lived on the edge of town in a 4-plex as the only resident. Out my front door was truck bypass in town where the trucks started ramping up their speed or were hitting their engine brakes depending on if they were out or in bound. Out the back door was the 8 track wide switching yard for the 100+car railroad trains heading north and south.

The reason this is relevant is that soon I could tell the difference in sounds of heavily loaded trucks apart from the low rumble of crashing rail cars merely by looking at which copper leaves were vibrating in which tree. As I moved around, the trees were often left behind. Occasionally I'd make another.

The one that survived the Camp Fire because we hadn't moved it to Paradise yet had the copper leaves replaced by marbles and some old glass fishing net floats. I made a little version of our solar system in the central area but it was never really built right to hold the weight of the marbles off beyond Pluto. It had also been cut apart and re-brazed together several time as I moved apartments.

When we moved to Gridley, CA in mid-2019, I re-cut and rebrazed it yet again to put it next to a deck I had built leading to the entrance to the travel trailer we are living in as I write. I still hadn't started the Phoenix (see Burning man 2020 pages coming soon) but needed an art project so started the first new tree I've made for over 20 years. This one to have copper leaves and mables/floats as the 'fruit'.

Below are a few picture of the trees. They are hard to photograph without having a large plain background, and these are in an item-rich scene. Enjoy.

Click any image to bring up larger version of the photos on the page.

Me (wizzard) building the base of the tree from copper coated steel welding rod, held together by melting hot brass/bronze into the joint between wires.