Toothpick Man, Near End of the Beach Regional

Keith Schon

Toothpicks, photo by Svenneman

I had a lot of fun last year participating in Balsa Man: volunteering at the Cafe, driving my RC art car around.  But the fact of the matter is, hauling all that stuff all the way to the far end of the beach is a pain in the ass.  It takes a lot of time, preparation, and endurance.  And all the “coping” — sand in my shoes, trying hard to find people… geeze!  I can’t do that every year.

This year, I want there to be an alternative for all those people who can’t get their act together in time for Balsa Man.  I intend to hold an even tinier event:  ”Toothpick Man”.  This will be held in the parking lot, or at the base of the stairs, depending on  circumstances.  The scale for this event will be approximately 1/5 that of Balsa Man, (i.e. 1/80 scale).  It will involve creature-comforts that are simply not available at the far end of the beach.

Grant requested:  $5 * 1/5 = $1

Simply bitsy brilliant Keith! We are more than happy to award you your grant of $1 and we will also be sending you a 1/5th size official regional certificate.

“we and our 1/3 scale son would like to bring The Ghost of the Balsa Man. He will be made of straws and tissue paper and can fly after the man burn, aided in flight by balloons. We’d like enough for helium to fill balloons to raise the man.

achemical and baby bot“

The Ghost of Balsa Man

One thing that worries us about this project is that the world’s supply of Helium is running out. But we overcame our worries—it is only a wafer thin amount of helium. Not knowing how much it costs to fill balloons, we decided to award a grant of $8 to match the width of the project.

Balsa Big Ben

Balsa Big Ben is 99% complete and we are putting on the finishing touches Sunday.  We’ve been hard at work cutting, swearing, gluing, drinking, sanding, and throwing our arms up in frustration… this last bit was when we found ourselves out of both glue and drink. Oh dear! We have powered through the difficult times and managed to get done without firing any volunteers or having any visits to medical professionals.

The Balsa Blighty Tiny Art Team met last night to review art grant submissions and a £5 art grant was awarded to Super Chicken of Balsa Blighty – a 6-8inch tall Super Chicken/ Rooster. It’s more of a Chicken so we shall call him a Chicken. He is made from several customized sizes of strike-on-the-box matches and clear glue. The frame of his body at least, the exterior of him will be covered in raffia of several colours depending on the location and appropriate colour. Cardboard may also be involved as well as a mysterious 3rd foot to make sure he stands upright.

Our other art projects include:

• Tiny Nowhere Omnibus – scheduled, on-time, public transport and tiny art tours. Complete with tiny passengers. Ding! Ding!
• Greening Balsa Blighty – trees trees everywhere making Balsa Blighty a greener sight to behold for all, tiny or otherwise.
• Mini Quixote’s Cabaret – the playa’s favourite British pub in a wee size!

We have also heard rumours of doves, mini ball bits, a flea circus acting as rangers, and perhaps even a tiny Gladys the Green Goddess. Gladys is part of the Nowhere Fire Service and is a much loved member of our community – more about the big size can be found on the Facebook page

I’m back to sniff some more balsa glue and finish the Big Ben!

I’m so excited for this! And we found a great location too! For location information for Balsa Blighty email balsablighty@balsaman.org

-Cheeky

Balsa Man Japan sits waiting for the burn!

It’s shaping up to be a don’t miss event—and sadly since BART doesn’t yet have a Tokyo station, I won’t be there. If you are planning on going make sure to review the Balsa Man Japan Tiny Map and read the Balsa Man Japan Survival Guide. Some wonderful tiny art and minute vehicles are going to be there, check out the photos below (more photos are on the Balsa Man Japan Flickr Group.

Cat Bus for Balsa Man Japan, photo by cabcab

Lamp fighters, back stage, photo by ijinden

You can donate via WePay using your bank account or a credit card using the button below. Note that the same donor award levels apply so you will get stickers and patches according to your donation level.

IMPORTANT: Saturday Aug 28th at 6pm is the cut off date if you want your donor awards delivered prior to the main event. We will still ship awards for donations after this date but we cannot guarantee that you will get them in time.

It’s not an official Tiny Art Build Night so it’s BYOBalsa and tools. A BPAF representative may or may not make an appearance depending on their schedule—it’s getting awfully close to the event!

“We stopped writing Dress Warm because it was just too fucking hard to write and produce multiple issues out on the beach in the space of only a few hours. But then we took a couple years off and got bored with not having an outlet for our snark. We were thinking of changing the name to the Balsa Village Weekly but that just sounded lame. There will only be one issue this year, but we promise it’ll be the best issue of Dress Warm you’ve ever read.”

And we have a exclusive sneak peak at the cover for this year’s Dress Warm!

Get your copy at this year’s Balsa Man! Also, this is the first year Dress Warm will be delivering copies to the Black Rock Desert Balsa Man Regional! So if you are stuck out in the desert make sure to stop by Fandago during the Regional on Friday 5-6pm for your copy of Dress Warm.

]]> http://balsaman.org/2010/08/dress-warm-is-back/feed/ 0 http://balsaman.org/2010/08/teeny-tropolis/ http://balsaman.org/2010/08/teeny-tropolis/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:43:45 +0000 Colin http://balsaman.org/?p=1712 We heard through the grape vine that this year the Black Rock Balsa Regional won’t be the only art project entertaining those desert campers. It seems that our small project has inspired others to also embrace the idea of making art out there on the Black Rock Desert—rather than just sit around staring at the mirages and dust devils. The one project we heard about seems cut directly from our own small artistic stock: Tiny Tropolis, 100 dioramas, each containing a small unique work of art by a tiny artist. Their box dimensions (12″ x 12″ x 8″) are a tad large, as such the BPAF can’t support their efforts.

Lo and behold, but what did the BPAF get in the mail but a grant request from J.D. & Logan for Tiny Tropolis’s smaller cousin Teeny Tropolis! No worries about supporting a project that was too large for their box dimensions are a wee 3.2 x 1.4 x 1.5 cm. Also we all applaud their choice of postcard—they really know how to stab into our hearts!

Congratulations J.D. & Logan for your grant award of $2! Unfortunately, none of the BPAF Art grant committee had the two dollar bill you specifically requested, but we will send your grant along as soon as we get one.

It's all smiles at the Balsa Man Cafe, photo by Miikka Skaffari

Here, at The Itty Bitty Balsa Cafe, we are just a little excited about our humble facility. There will be tiny taste treats and delicious nibbles, along with sips of this-and-that to savor during a quick break from your truncated journey through this veritable village of forged dreams.

Our small mission is to craft an environment wherein brief encounters of light-hearted social interplay may create the minutest amount of drama so-as to stimulated co-creativity without the need for a drama-free zone. But. Just in case. There will be a wee dunce cap in the corner for those wishing to be placed on personal alert to self-moderate any larger expressions of dynamic character. We want everyone to have an equally wholesome good time.

As such, we keep our menu limited for the purpose of maintaining the main focus of short, interconnected, collaborative moments. The cafe is a place where you can pause to reflect upon the tidbits of talent that adorn Tiny Art Main Street. Perhaps you will meet a tiny artist? Share a tiny treat? Crack a quick smile? Then move along

When you do return to the clement environment of our fair shores, kindly refrain from tromping upon the art.

This morning our beloved Smallest, Colin Fahrion, said something to me that I found truly inspiring. In the tradition of Zen koans like “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” he offered me insight in the form of a question: “Where’s the fucking blog entry you said you were going to write two weeks ago?”

This question snapped me out of an unproductive mindset—namely, that it’s hard to be creative—and replaced it with a far more useful approach: turn the goddamn braincrank until your monkey mind poops out some art, then go get lunch.

They're all dead now. Fuck big art.

I am reminded of this brief essay: The Cult of Done Manifesto

The whole thing is brilliant, not only because it was written in 15 minutes, but because it’s a razor-sharp X-acto blade you can plunge into the cardboard excuses that keep you from being awesome. Foremost among these, for me, is this:

Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.

Balsa Man is a standout example of what the philosopher Rakim Yay termed the Fleeting Autonomous Zonelet—the FAZ.

Rakim’s essay comes to us from a single surviving manuscript hastily scribbled in a taxi in South Passaic on the back of a coupon good for one order of Krab Rangoon at the Jin Glatt Kosher Chinese Restaurant. The essay reads, in full:

Fortunately for posterity, the coupon had expired, and the manuscript was published in 1993 in the now-defunct “Dress Warm”, the official samizdat of the Balsa Man underground community.

In conclusion, don’t worry about finishing anything. Just start, and the rest will

]]> http://balsaman.org/2010/08/close-enough-is-perfect/feed/ 0