🐆️ 747 PROJECT
a multi-year build and collaborative art installation
✖️ Mojave Desert + Black Rock Desert, 2015-2019
once upon a time at Burning Man, I became part of a craaazy multi-year project based in the Mojave Desert involving a ragtag team of volunteer builders, welders, NASA rocket scientists, dirtbag hippies, and wandering artists (like me). together, we tore apart and re-architected the hull of a retired Boeing 747 and turned it into a moving art installation or "art car" for Burning Man.
this was a wildly ambitious project: the plane, a 1985 Varig cargo conversion that once carried passengers in Brazil, was resurrected from the Mojave Airplane Graveyard or "Boneyard,” which remains the coolest and most acoustically-interesting place i have ever been.
as a "flight mechanic" and build crew supervisor, i got to don a lot of new hats: metalworking, woodworking, welding, as well as best practices for avoiding scorpions and fire ants. despite assumptions, this project was not glamorous (though the party on-playa might have been...)
when this massive build concluded in 2019, the plane went down in history, and maybe infamy, as the biggest burning man art car ever.
✏️ I wrote about my experience for 6x8 Press: And then something weird happened: Burning Man from 30,000 ft
this was a wildly ambitious project: the plane, a 1985 Varig cargo conversion that once carried passengers in Brazil, was resurrected from the Mojave Airplane Graveyard or "Boneyard,” which remains the coolest and most acoustically-interesting place i have ever been.
as a "flight mechanic" and build crew supervisor, i got to don a lot of new hats: metalworking, woodworking, welding, as well as best practices for avoiding scorpions and fire ants. despite assumptions, this project was not glamorous (though the party on-playa might have been...)
when this massive build concluded in 2019, the plane went down in history, and maybe infamy, as the biggest burning man art car ever.
✏️ I wrote about my experience for 6x8 Press: And then something weird happened: Burning Man from 30,000 ft
the DJ booth I designed and built:
NOT standard issue from Boeing!
here’s what really went down on the plane...
massive gratitude to the weird, wild, wonderful humans whose love and big imaginations gave this project its stumpy, overly-reinforced wings.
sun-bleached days and endless nights spent working on the plane in desert winds, our worklights but small beacons against an endless array of red wind turbine lights under shifting and spreading galaxies remain the best days of my existence.
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sun-bleached days and endless nights spent working on the plane in desert winds, our worklights but small beacons against an endless array of red wind turbine lights under shifting and spreading galaxies remain the best days of my existence.
