Mark Wagner, Founder and Creative Director of the nonprofit Drawing on Earth went to Burning Man this year. Wagner registered onsite as an official Burning Man artist on the desert in Northern Nevada. He picked a spot, a marker was set with a GPS and Wagner, and using a simple garden tool, rope, stake, and a hammer he drew on the Earth. Working in the early mornings and late into the night under an amazing bright full moon Wagner covered approx. an acre of desert with drawings.
Burning Man is one of the largest creative events in the world. This year over 60,000 lived creatively together on a dried lake bed north of Reno NV. When everyone was gone, there was “no trace” of people being there. Happens every year over Labor Day. www.burningman.com
In the end Wagner got an airplane ride and was able to photograph the work. “The drawings were was so big down there on the desert, you had to ride a bike for awhile to see everything. But up here in the plane everything looks so small to whats really going on down there.” It was a good experiment and it gave Wagner more ideas, next time a driver-less vehicle with computer designs on board and a several days of drawings that would cover a few miles.
The Burning Man 2012 satellite photo does show the work. Wagner”s 3rd satellite photograph of Drawings on Earth. The first was a Guinness World Record awarded for the largest pavement art (chalk drawing / street painting), and the second one was also a large chalk drawing created in Venezuela.
