Up early in the morning and the light illuminates the newly minted domes. So fresh and clean, with barely a coat of dust on them yet.

With most of the infrastructure sorted the day before we're onto the fun task of putting up the rest of the 8 domes that we'd brought.

The light and colours were so beautiful I couldn't help but fill the camera with photos of our shiny new domes.

The colours pop on the flat playa, lighting up the surrounding area.

The setup team is wonderful, with lots of laughter and fun.

More and more wonderful stuff goes up as the day goes on.

We wait out the heat of the day in the shade of our new domes until the day cools down enough to keep working.

More deco, cushions and lighting go in as the final touches are added to the domes.

The circus rig goes up and the final touches get added to the mascot swing.

Home sweet home!

The sign gets hung above the swing and finally turned on!

Our beautiful camp is open for the public and ready for us to enjoy the rest of the Burn!

If there’s one thing about the creation of Burning Man, it’s that it takes a lot of stuff. Setting up and living in the desert requires no shortage of things, and even though we have it down to an art at this point, it’s still a lot of work.

We arrive in Reno to meet the rest of the team. The days there are filled with running around purchasing groceries, tools, supplies and all manner of things we’ll need to survive on the playa for the next two weeks.

We build the rest of the domes and playa tech we need, finish client orders, and pack every nook and cranny of our trailer. The team is tired already but ready to head out to one of our favourite places in the world.

Up at the crack of dawn, we get there and wait for several hours in the lineup, adjusting to the high altitude and heat.

Finally we arrive at the place we will call our very own for the times to come.

Even though it’s already been a long few days, we need to set up as much as possible so that we can have shelter and food by the time the night arrives.

The domes we build will go up quickly, but there’s still a ton of other infrastructure that needs to be handled.

Most of the days work involves pulling apart the trailer, sorting and prepping everything that needs to be installed.

The camp goes up inch by inch as the day goes on.

As the sun goes down and we take a moment to absorb our very first sunset on the playa.

Night falls and we set up construction lights to finish as much as we can before bed.

We finally install lighting into the newly erected domes and suddenly we have our first beautiful lantern illuminating the almost empty playa around us.

The tired but successful team all crawls into our communal space and bunks down for the night. It will be another early and long day tomorrow, but the first setup day was a resounding success.

The road to Burning Man is something the Archimedes team has travelled every year for the last nine years. It is the incubator for so many ideas and ways of life, and it is the genesis of the original Archimedes Dome.

Without this space to push and mould us, we never would’ve seen the need to design something better than what we saw available. This festival has literally shaped the course of our lives.

For us, the return to this space year after year not only to brings us back to our core of innovation, but it’s a place to give back and be reminded about why we do what we do.

Normally we don’t bring the whole team to the playa every year. Most often there are other festivals and clients that need attention and we split our team to handle multiple projects.

But this year was special. After only three years of business we realized that we would have over 40 clients on the playa with one or more of our domes. For a core team of three that makes all our products by hand, that was a pretty mind-blowing accomplishment to have at one festival.

So off we headed as a team, taking on the annual drive from New York to Reno. A several day trip that consists of mostly sleeping in the car, rotating drivers and strange rest stops in unknown places.

After several days of driving we hit the home of long time friends Dana and Zach in Salt Lake City.

Not just a lovely stop-over where we get to sleep on a real bed, but also an incredible chance to connect with a little bit of their wonderful community in Salt Lake.

Since we also do performance work on top of the many other things we do, Dana put together a evening where we could show some of what we have to offer.

With the full Solar eclipse set to happen the next day, the performance focused on balance and the role the shadow has to play in our lives.

It was a wonderful evening where we truly felt the gift of getting to connect in that space.

We were up bright and early the next morning to drive 6 hours out of our way into Idaho in the hopes of catching the total eclipse.

The whole drive we weren’t really sure if the extra miles would be worth it. We had already been on the road for days and we were adding a full half day to our route.

But as the moon fully covered the sun and we saw it for the first time we were completely blown away by the magic and power of the event. It was such a good reminder that, even when we feel that what we do on earth is so important, we are truly tiny in the scope of the universe.

Perspective re-established, we got back into the truck and headed on to the serious task of Burning Man prep in Reno.

More of our journey to come!

“Trust”  45"x52" Glass, stone, biological matter2016

One of the most incredible and divine things that human beings have access to is the physical creation of new life. The concept of where and how life is created is still one that boggles the mind.

No matter your religious or spiritual beliefs, all people agree that the creation of new life is a mysterious process. The act of two individuals finding each other and combining their genetic material to create an entirely new person is nothing short of a miracle.

This large scale light box is based on a real life event of a couple coming together to conceive a child. The portrait began as a discussion of the divine aspect of two individuals creating life. As the sculpture was being made as the child was born, but life had other plans.

The birthing process involved serious complications and the couple was unsure if their child would survive. Without the work and persistence of modern medicine, the divine entry of a new soul may have ended before it began.

Through an intensive process of medicine, perseverance and faith, the child pulled through and is now healthy and strong. Trust became a portrait not only of the divine nature of life, but of just how fragile life can be.

Trust was shown in March 2016 in My body is a battlefeild, SUB Gallery, Montreal.

For in process about this piece, go

here

,

here

and

here

. 

Elements Music & Arts Festival was a completely grand spectacle set right in the heart of Brooklyn. With well over 5000 people in attendance and dozens of large-scale art installations, this industrial site was transformed into a fantastical circus of art and music.

The day was sweltering hot, and we were extremely glad that we had brought out these domes. At any given moment the domes were packed with people taking a break from the sun.

Despite the heat, you could tell that the participants were extremely engaged and excited to be there. Smiles and enthusiasm abounded as people doused themselves with water and took breaks in the shade so that they could carry on dancing and exploring.

Spread across the site, each of these four domes did an excellent job of housing massive crowds and adding splashes of brilliant art and color to the industrial skyline.

The VIP lounge was packed with organizers and performers who could take a break from the heat by lounging on furniture and having an ice-cold drink provided by MYX tv.

The Earth Stage was one of the warmest places on site, and I couldn’t believe how many people were packed into our dome at any given moment. With the dome installed right on the dance floor, people had a place to escape the swelter while still being able to dance to the excellent music going on at the stage.

The dome installed by the main stage was a great place to stop and have a conversation after cooling down in the water spray system that was installed behind the dome along the canal.

The Firelight dome housed the cuddle puddle and a few people set up doing face painting and glitter. Located right in the middle of the site, the dome allowed a great space to rest in the midst of your explorations.

It was also nice to run into the other amazing artists that were installed at the event, like Tico Chango, the Incendia team and Rhizome Productions, all artists that we had worked with at Gratitude Migration this summer.

All in all, the locations of all of these domes were functional and ideal. Having them spread around the site made great oases for the participants to rest and be sheltered. But more than just functional, these domes were a superb addition to the incredible amount of art that the BangOn!

team brought out to this massive event. We were so happy to be able to add a beautiful and useful addition to this marvellous party.

Building domes began because at the core of our identity we are festival-goers. We didn’t come up with a design and then decide to market it on the festival circuit. We designed these domes because we were already on the festival circuit and needed infrastructure that offered better solutions to create space and shelter. The business began because we wanted to offer what we had created to other people who needed better solutions. One of the solutions we found was a way to offer more comfortable personal camping.

Before I started doing the festival circuit professionally I had no problem attending a festival with the minimum comfort required. Years ago I used to sleep in a tiny tent on the ground without so much asa sleeping mat. But there’s something that comes from being on the road and sleeping outside for almost 5 months of the year. Suddenly having creature comforts is a matter of self care and mental health. 

The wonderful thing about these domes is that they make an incredible space so very quickly. With standard V3 dome installation, it would be unthinkable to build yourself a personal dome just for a week or weekend. You would have to be onsite the week before and the week after just to build and deconstruct your shelter. But with our dome design, you can put up your own 13-foot diameter dome in under 20 minutes. With domes this easy, why would we ever sleep in a tent? 

We spend so much time in these domes that our standards of living in them are quite like at home. We no longer shirk at bringing out real blankets, good queen-sized sleeping mats, beautiful lighting and art. When you live on the road personal space is where you can go to be calm and happy amidst the sometimes chaotic world around you.

Last fall Toby and Michael put the shelter capacity of the domes to the test and decided to spend a good part of the fall and winter living in a dome. Although we normally just tour in them, they were working at Werewolf Ranch for a few months and needed something more permanent. It was a great test to see just how long these domes could be useful as housing.

Because the weather was going to start to get colder they needed a good solution for keeping the dome cozy into the winter months. Packing blankets were a great cheap solution for insulating the space. Cut to the shape of hexs and pents, the packing blankets went on the outside of their personal scout-sized tent. When left just like this the packing blankets had the extra benefit of being slightly rain-proofing. Because the seams of the packing blankets pointed outwards there were no drip points going into the dome. In light rain the blankets wicked the moisture down to the ground instead of soaking through into the space.  

As the weather got colder they decided to build onto the dome to protect it even more. To add warmth they set up a Nomad sized dome around the Scout. The two domes inside each other added an extra layer of air between the Scout and the outside world. The result was a space that stayed cozy and warm even into the winter, and they lived quite happily in it.

My own favourite personal space of this year was at this years Solstice festival. I was out at the festival grounds early to help build one of the stages. After several festivals in a row I knew we wanted to be as comfortable as possible for the few weeks we were there. I also knew that it was projected to be extremely rainy and I weren’t interested in living in a small damp tent in the middle of a rainstorm.

Because I knew it was supposed to rain so much the installation of our dome centred around the weather. Normally when we set up a scout we just install the tent and shade stars, and then we pull over our rain fly only when it starts to rain. But because the rain was supposed to be continuous I decided to set this scout up backwards.

First I set up the frame and then covered it entirely with sheets of painters plastic. The tent then went on the outside of the plastic instead of being clipped to the inside of the frame like we normally do. Generally when we have plastic covering the frame so tightly like this we have a slight problem with water pooling on top of the ceiling. But having the tent on the outside had the effect of wicking all of the moisture down to the ground. Although the amount of rain, lighting and tornado warnings we got during the two weeks was insane, the dome was eternally a dry little shelter I could go back to. Any time I needed a break I could go back to this dome, peel off my wet clothes and crawl into a warm bed between dry bedding. It was heavenly.

The addition of a bug net was also useful at this festival. Being in a forest meant the bugs were prolific, but having a net over the sleeping area meant I were never bothered.

But besides the practically of the dome as a shelter, I also wanted the dome to be a home. For me my spiritual practice is a pretty big part of my grounding. I generally practice meditation in front of a little altar with incense and stones, and I like to set one up wherever I rest my head. I added a little bit of art from my Figment installation and we bought some fresh flowers from the local town. Every time I entered this space I could feel the difficulty of the weather and installation stress slipping away. This space was a haven in the midst of a literal storm.

We know that not everyone needs a personal-sized dome for their festival participation. But trust us, once you get used to this small piece of home wherever you happen to need it, we know that you’ll never want to go back to tent camping. We know we sure don’t.

One of the things that Archimedes Design has always been focused on is seeking to create and foster a strong sense of community in our relationships and creations.

At

Gratitude Migration

with both the domes and the Fire Safety village we were deliberate and intentional about trying to build and hold space for others.

At this festival our team headed up Fire Safety. We care about the practical matters of keeping people safe while they do incredible things, and throughout our lives we have all acquired skills to help assist in these practical ways.

But we didn’t just want to work as Safeties. We also wanted to create a space where all our volunteers, performers, and any of the general public could come, hang out, learn about things and have great conversations.

We desire to create meaningful connections. For us the domes are just a container that can make space where people connect and grow with others.

For me Community has been a central stabilizing and informing force in my life. One that has been very personal, very present and has guided most of my life choices on a daily basis.

I think nowadays in a world which seems to favour the individualist, the importance of being surrounded by a strong community has dropped. While most people still need to be part of a community for life’s necessities, many people seem to be choosing a life outside of community living. But spaces such as the festival culture are starting to shed a more valuable light on how life changing being a part of a community can be.

As people who often live alternative lifestyles, finding support in the festival community from others who share your values can often be life changing. A community is an incredible space to bring people together to advocate and support each other in the fight to overcome difficulty. It means that we're not in the world alone, we're not fighting our battles by ourselves. It is a safe place where people can come to learn and grow into the type of people they want to become.

Not that being in a community is always easy. There can often be conflict, or ideas that don’t quite align. Being a part of something bigger than yourself is a humbling experience, and brings you up against challenges on a daily basis. But they are challenges that can help you, and others, to grow in a positive way.

There is something indescribably lovely about being a part of a group of people who share something more substantial than geographical location. . . something they feel passionately about. Something that, when shared, makes individuals seem less lonely.

For us at Archimedes, community building will always be at the forefront of what we seek to do. We want to have others to share our lives with, to care for and help in their time of need.

We believe that Gratitude Migration is a community. It is one that has welcomed us, supports us, and that we can continually seek to grow in a mutual way with. We are so grateful to be a part of this incredible community. We cannot wait to see all of the amazing things we’ll do together in the years to come!

The Blacklight Temple was brought to this years Gratitude Migration for its second incarnation.

The Temple was extremely successful

last year

and artist

Tico Chango

asked if we could bring it back for another installation.

We updated it with a new ceiling and built a seating area for it, something we felt it was missing last year. The installation felt much more complete with a place people could sit down to admire the art from.

Once again the space was filled with amazing artists sharing their creative gifts with the festival. Body painters and other creatives activated the space all day and night. There was always something wonderful to see in this space.

Thank you to all of the amazing people who filled this space with their gifts all weekend!

All photos by Myself or Dina Devine

People choose to volunteer for a variety of reasons. For some, it provides an opportunity to develop new skills or build on existing experience and knowledge. Others just want to give back to their community, to help a friend or promote a worthwhile activity. Helping others kindles happiness, and doing it makes you feel good. Regardless of the motivation, what unites them all is that it's rewarding.

This is the intrinsic value of volunteering. It is not about money. It’s about contributing to the world around us with the intention of helping us all move forward.

Gratitude Migration

could not exist without its multitude of volunteers. This festival needs people at each and every level and genre to make this massive project run smoothly. It could not survive without everyone who steps up and puts in energy to create this space.

This year Gratitude wanted to say a little thank you to the volunteers by giving them their own special volunteer lounge. We took a Lodge sized dome and branded it with the Gratitude logo. Then it was filled with flooring, deco, cushions, snacks and drinks. Everything it make a volunteer feel comfortable and happy as a small reward and thank you for their wonderful service.

We’re so grateful for all of the people, volunteers and otherwise who made this festival so great. Thank you to you all for your incredibly hard work!

All photos by Myself, Dina Devine and Brian Cruikshank

The Acro Dome was an amazing installation that happened at this year’s Gratitude Migration inside of the Solar Temple. Several wonderful teams came out to teach the participants of the festival some skills to engage in this incredible art.

AcroYoga creates a tangible sense of tribe and celebration which is hard to find anywhere else, and this dome was alive with the sense of community all weekend long. Filled with laughter and play, we were so glad that we chose to make this space visually the brightest and most playful out of all the domes we created for the weekend.

AcroYoga has its roots in the beginning of the century and has continually been developed by practitioners since then. It is a mix of partner acrobatics, Thai massage, and yoga. Essentially, it builds a practice of the understanding of trust. Trust within the body, trust within the community, and trust in the fact that it's a lot of fun to do these amazing things you never thought you'd be able to do.

Unlike practicing alone where you can spend a lot of time in your head, partner work is deeply rooted in a shared experience. In addition to honing the skill of sharing a physical practice, AcroYoga helps to develop open, direct, and compassionate verbal communication with whomever you’re paired with.

The practice of AcroYoga is split into two parts, Acrobatic (Solar) and Therapeutic (Lunar). Each side explores the relationship between the mover and those being moved. In the dynamic Solar practice, participants learn three different roles: Base (mover), Flyer (being moved), and Spotter (knowledge of both). Lunar theraputics embraces the deeply healing connection to metta—loving kindness. Here, the Giver is the mover, the Receiver is the one being moved and balance is the midpoint between extremes.

This dome was such an embodiment of the spirit of the practice; communicative, playful, and focused on connection. It was so wonderful to watch the myriads of people opening up in this space all weekend.

Thank you to all of the incredible people who taught and participated. Your joy and engagement was truly inspiring!

All photos by Myself or Dina Devine

The WOOM Dome was a part of the holistic healing and growth complex of domes at Gratitude Migration this year. Held inside of the new Alabaster Temple, this space was created as a place of quiet contemplation and gentle experience to expand the minds and consciousness of the participants of the festival.

The space was run by the WOOM Centre and held classes and experiences such as yoga, sound baths and meditations, and was always full of calm and beautiful energy.

“WOOM CENTER is the holistic lovechild of east and west, tradition and innovation, the personal and the communal. Seamlessly blending ancient practices of yoga and meditation, a futuristic flavor for technology, and a deep desire to stay present.

WOOM is inspired by many philosophies, yet follows no particular one. It is nondenominational, unbiased and fear-free. It is oneness-centered, pro-choice and love-driven. It is about what brings us together and makes us realize how undeniably connected we are.

We seek to incite curiosity among our fellow humans regarding their higher states of consciousness, and to offer the perfect setting to explore them naturally and safely. It is not only our right, but also our cosmic responsibility, to grow and transform. We want to make this exploration available for everyone, every day, especially for the high vibrational people of New York City.” -WOOM Mission statement.

Although the Alabaster Temple ended up being slightly too small for the crowds these experiences drew, it was so beautiful to see this new gleaming dome fulfill the role it had been created for.

Thank you so much to WOOM for their beautiful infusion of energy into this space.

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,

breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists

and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,

imagine grief

as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

-Judyth Hill

It was a beautiful day of Gratitude Migration setup yesterday!

It’s always such a pleasure to work with this group of producers at Gratitude. Everyone is cheerful and committed to getting the job done. We’re so grateful for the support and encouragement of this awesome festival.

The day was hot and sunny. but unlike last year which was almost unbearably hot on setup days, yesterday had a cool breeze and a little bit of cloud cover. It was still pretty intense, but as long as you made sure you drank a lot of water, the whole day was really manageable.

We were blessed to have our little six person team out there. The few extra hands were so useful and the domes went up quickly with little hassle.

The Wellness Village in particular looked spectacular. We enlarged the size of it from 3 Nomads and a Lodge last year, to five Lodges, our biggest structures. Lots of space for all of the classes and workshops which will be going on over the weekend.

The main complex has three domes all linked together. You enter into the complex through the middle dome, which opens up into the two large domes to either side. I can’t wait to see this space utilized by all the incredible programming Gratitude has to offer.

As well as the three dome complex, there is the acro-yoga dome, which looked so bright and happy against the beautiful beach background.

One more dome in the Wellness Village still needs to be set up today, and once it is the area will be completely ready for the amazing programming to happen all weekend!

Along with the new Wellness Village, the blacklight dome we had brought out last year was set up again.

This year we added a new custom ceiling to add a little pop to the colours of the dome. A matching blacklight reactive seating area will also be installed in this space today.

Soon the space will be filled with a myriad of artists who will turn this space into a live gallery worth visiting!

A little father down the beach another Lodge was built for the volunteer lounge. The Gratitude volunteers are always amazing, and this year the festival organizers wanted to thank them by making their own little space to call their own.

The Gratitude Migration logo was added to this beautiful dome.

Spray painting on this windy beach is aways a hassle, but with the help of some more volunteers we were able to make it happen.

Tomorrow this pretty little dome will get filled with live sod grass. The volunteers will have cozy place to stay out of the sun and connect with the other people willing to put time and energy into making this festival happen.

As the sun goes down we packed out our stuff, heading home to finish building the rest of what was needed for the space. Today will be another big install day as several more domes will be going up on site! See you all out there!

It was an unbelievably rainy Solstice Gathering this year in Singhampton, Ontario. Tornado warnings, thunderstorms, lightning, and rain and rain and rain. It was the type of festival you wouldn't be able to survive without a good pair of rubber boots and a committed spirit.

Most years at this festival are warm and sunny. The most active pastime of the event is laying in a field or by the pond sunning yourself. But this year deemed to be quite different.

I think most people who arrived into the space were quite unprepared for the weather. It was well outside what a normal, even seasoned camper would be used to experiencing. It was mucky and a very common story to wake up floating in the lake that had sprung up in your tent during the nighttime rainstorms.

The gracious farmer who brought his tractor to the land to help pull out stuck vehicles told me that by Friday night, he had already pulled out 77 vehicles. It was that kind of festival.

A lot of people who arrived ended up not staying through the whole week. But the people who stuck it out did their best to keep their spirits high and engage with the community. By the weekend we were rewarded for our commitment with almost a full 24 hours of no rain. The stages were able to hit full swing and everyone was able to come out of their tents and dance away the wet clothes and stresses of the week.

Because of the rain it made for a very different kind of festival. People needed to hibernate a lot more because it wasn't quite warm enough to be soaking wet all the time.

The dome was pretty ideal in these circumstances, and our team was blessed with a cozy and dry place to congregate during the rain storms.

Many a cozy colourful thing was brought into the dome. Boots were left at the door. Lots of cuddling to ward off the wet and cold.

It was just a bunch of friends and often strangers (soon to become new friends), enjoying each others company, hid away from some of the outdoor elements.

Festivals like this are often challenging. But it really helps to have at least one place you can go which gives you some rest for a while.

The Embodiment Temple is a sculpture by artist Jodi Sharp.

It is a series of transparent portraits of community activists that creates an enclosed space the viewer can walk into.

The portraits, while housing powerful individuals who are making change in the world, are also representative of the potential for all bodies to come together in community.

The interior of each portrait is made up of a hand-cut stain glass piece, which represents the spiritual centre of each individual.

Each spirit is unique and evolving, and yet all the images of spirit have a similar base that links all the people together.

As you enter into the sculpture you are able to engage with the warmth and containment of the community space and visualize what your own spiritual centre might look like.

The Embodiment Temple will be heading to Solstice Gathering in Ontario, Canada this next week. If you're in that area you should pop by!

The “Free-dome” was an art installation that went up at this year’s Figment Toronto.

It was a walking labyrinth placed inside two domes that sat in a fractal pattern.

A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path.

The Labyrinth mimics the circulation in our bodies and represents a journey to our own centre and back again out into the world. Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer tools.

In the labyrinth, as in life, there is no single right way to follow the path, only the continued practice of trying to bring into wholeness all parts of your being.

This labyrinth was focused on the practice of letting go of fear.

On the table were several different coloured rocks labeled with different areas people often feel fear around.

People chose the coloured rock of their choice, and carried it with them as they walked the path.

As they entered the labyrinth, they were invited to focus their thoughts on a question or concern.

At the centre of the labyrinth they were invited to leave the rock as a symbol of letting go of their fear in that area.

Throughout the labyrinth there were the words from an excerpt of the poem “I Give You Back,” by Joy Harjo.

I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear.

I release you, fear, so you can no longer keep me naked and frozen in the winter, or smothered under blankets in the summer.

I am not afraid to be angry. I am not afraid to rejoice.

I am not afraid to be hated. I am not afraid to be loved.

You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.

You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

More pictures of Figment to come!

The Figment festival is upon us once again. That wonderful time of year where dozens of Toronto artists come out and fill the park with participatory art projects.

In the years previous we had always built large shade complexes in the middle of the parade grounds to provide shade for the participants. But this year I decided to do something a little different.

This year I decided to do a couple of smaller domes in the midst of the beautiful trees of the park.

One thing I’ve been wanting to try for a while was “fractal domes,” where we place a dome within a dome.

Figment was a great space to try this out for the first time.

It couldn’t have looked better. We just loved the look of a tiny little Scout inside of the Lodge.

We left the side panels off so you could get a wonderful view of the little dome and the people that would be inside.

The participatory installation was then set up inside the domes.

Final touches are done, like rocks that need to be sorted by colour for the use of the participants.

The second dome is set up within view of the space.

The fibre and glass panels carefully hung. I couldn’t have been happier with the look of the sun shining through the glass.

All set up and ready to go for the participants of Figment!

More images of Figment to come!

Photos by Mike Ghenu and Glenn Grant

I got the pleasure of setting up at and supporting the wonderful LeSpaceMaker in Montreal a few weekends ago.

LeSpaceMaker is an incredible non-profit social economy enterprise that is just opening in order to facilitate space for artists and makers to create all sorts of incredible projects. Its goal is to offer a collaborative space for fabrication (making), learning, exploration, creation, exhibition, and sharing of knowledge. One of its goals is to give access to specialized tools, to offer the space to use them and unite varied expertise.

They held an incredible opening fundraiser party to raise awareness and money for the new establishment they're opening. It was held in their amazing new space, a huge warehouse which will soon be filled with all manor of equipment for its members to build with. 

The party was a big gathering of artists, performers, djs, vjs and great friends.

There was a good vibe, with an excellent turnout and several rooms with different types of music and performance that you could flow between.

This dome was a brand new gold version that my awesome client Derek Jones commissioned for this years season.

An incredible shimmery gold, I was so excited when I first found this fabric, and super excited to see it fully in action.

Unlike our other domes which are focused on the shade stars, with this version we tried a full gold ceiling and an attached clamshell panel that surrounds the base.

It made for an incredible tent-like shimmer that surrounded everyone who entered. It also made for some pretty awesome photo ops!

The dome was in its own tiny little room, with the doorway opening directly into the dome. It created a super cozy shoes-off space that was filled with cushions and cozy things.

The functionality of this wonderful little plounge space was amazing. Full of conversations, acro-yoga, cuddling, laughter, and happy people all night long.

So happy to have supported this wonderful new establishment in the launch of this incredible space!

The installation My Body is a Battlefield was an exhibit that discussed what can happen when individuals band together to shift the overarching system of postmodernist nihilism and fear that is prominent in the world at large.

Every day we are assaulted with an unhealthy consumerist society. The current realm of power manifests in the form of large corporations and governments who are focused on a profit instead of the true wellbeing of individuals. It is a daily task to keep the negative assault of fear mongering and consumerism out of our bodies in order to concentrate on a progression towards positive change. One of the easiest ways to do this is to band together with other like minded individuals who are focused on creating solutions to make the world a better place. This installation is about the communities of people who are attempting to shift the cultural norms of systemic oppression and harmful human action.

As you enter the gallery you are assaulted with media images of common advertising, newscasts and social media. These are prevalent and normalized reflections of violence, social unrest, white privilege, the hyper sexualized female body and corporate propaganda. These projections cycle through our vision, every once in a while coming to periods of rest that remind us the release we feel when we cut this type of media out of our routine.

In the centre of the gallery a sculpture of transparent portraits of community activists create an enclosed space that is inserted underneath the projected image. The portraits, while housing powerful individuals who are making change in the world, are also representative of the potential for all bodies to come together in community.

From the outside of the enclosure the projection is the most prominent aspect, but as you enter into the shelter of the community space the image shifts to one of warmth and containment.

The appearance is changed again by a series of mirrors that reflect the image back towards the projection.

The viewer is also implicated in the piece through their own shadow and reflection that changes the final image.

The installation becomes about the beauty of the new and ever changing light that is created from these interventions.

Through the action of light being projected and constantly changing, this exhibit discusses the power of the individual and community to have an impact on the greater dialogue in order to elicit change.

My Body is a Battlefield will ran in the SUB gallery in Montreal from March 21-25, 2017.

Setup days for the gallery finally arrive. I was really excited to get all the stuff out of my living room and have some space back. It may not seem like it, but a dome takes a huge amount of fabric to cover.

I carefully packed and moved them. The adhered glass was really fragile and I didn't want anything cracking before the show.

A bunch of prep still had to be done in the gallery before we could set up the dome. An entire wall of mirrors was installed on the back wall of the gallery to reflect the light that would be projected at the dome. It took quite a lot of jigging, and I was grateful to artist Kevin Flynn who came in to give me a hand installing the five 8 foot tall mirrors.

As well the hubs and poles were all coated with a mat black spray paint, a look I love and am excited to tour several of our domes with this year.

Once the gallery was ready I could begin installing the dome. But this installation is a bit different than domes we've built before and required a bit of experimentation.

Normally we have bungee harnesses that create the tensile strength necessary to hold together the dome, but I decided I wanted to try something new this time.

I wanted to see if I could design a system that would take the star shape out of the interior of the panels. I wanted the panels to be completely free of distraction.

To do this I used ratchet straps to loop the hubs and poles together, ratcheting them super tight to see if we could create the type of strength necessary to hold the dome together.

Honestly, I didn't think that it would be that easy, and I was all prepared to use springs and rope in various formations to achieve the strength.

But the ratcheting worked great. It was actually amazingly stable. When I did pressure tests on the dome it actually seemed to be holding up better than the harnesses did.

The one thing about using the ratchets was that they were a pain to install. Unlike the bungee harnesses which go on in seconds, the ratchets were finicky and difficult. When you put on a harness it naturally holds the poles and hubs together as you're installing, but with ratchets you didn't have that. I had to come up with a system of tying the poles together as we raised the dome so that they would stay connected.

As soon as the dome was most of the way up I wanted to try the first lighting tests.

There had been no way to test any of this aspect before the actual installation. I had an idea of what the materials would do, but I wasn't actually sure if it would work.

The goal was for the mirrors and the dome to bounce the projection light around the room, which would shift the content of the video.

I couldn't have been more thrilled with the outcome. The bouncing light was amazing and the dome did exactly what I hoped in changing the nature of the image.

The rest of the panels went up and I was super happy with how they all turned out and looked on the dome.

I also loved how clean and slick the lines of the dome were with the new harness system!

A floor covering needed to be made for the dome. A full night was spent laying out canvas and cutting panels to make a floor that would fit the footprint of the dome exactly.

Electrical needed to be wired so that there would be lighting in specific hubs of the dome to cast light in the correct way.

By this point I was already a couple days in. It was hard to tell the time of day inside the windowless gallery as I just kept plugging along.

Sleeping on the floor became a pretty regular occurrence as I worked between cups of coffee.

The floor gets laid and I begin to prep designs to paint on the canvas floor.

Once the paint has dried a soft and comfy plounge gets put underneath it so that the whole dome will be like walking into a cozy pillow.

After about three days of work, fussing and perfecting, last minute touches to the video and installation of signage, the dome is finally ready to be shown.

The very last thing I needed to do was a little personal ritual to cleanse and prepare the space. I spent the final night alone in the dome, meditating and clearing the space, with the intention of creating a settled and grounded temple that participants could enter into.

The next morning, the show opened, and the dome was ready to be seen by all!