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Chicago's Only Artist Featured At Burning Man Hopes For Big Break

By Paul Biasco | August 4, 2016 5:46am
 Artist Davis McCarty
Davis McCarty's 'Pulse Portal'
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HUMBOLDT PARK — In a second-floor artists loft, a 31-year-old artist has been working for months to create the piece that he hopes will be seen by 70,000 people and launch his art career.

Davis McCarty's work has been showcased at Spring Awakening, North Coast, inside the Sears Tower, Union Station and at other music festivals around the country, but never on the scale of what is coming up at the end of August.

McCarty's 16-foot-tall arching sculpture will be one of the featured works at Burning Man, the festival/city that pops up out of the Nevada desert every summer for a single week.

"Festival art and fine art don't necessarily mesh, you can have all the festival credibility in the world, and a gallery still doesn't have any interest in working with you," McCarty said. "I know the quality of the work is there. It's just about how you frame it and if you can get it in front of the right eyeballs."


A rendering of "Pulse Portal,"  the 16-foot sculpture Davis McCarty is building for Nevada's Burning Man fest.

McCarty, who has lived and worked out of the Catalyst lofts in Humboldt Park for about three years, was a recipient of a grant worth more than $10,000 given by Burning Man to dozens of artists around the world this year. The artists are tasked with creating pieces of art that will be showcased in the desert.

This year's recipients include two Oakland-based artists who are creating a '40s-style working diner in the desert, a New Zealand group that is creating a giant insect that shoots flames from 4-foot-long antennae and a California-based artist creating a towering temple. (A full list can be found at burningman.org.)


The temple created through a grant during Burning Man in 2012. [Flickr/stuartlchambers]

McCarty is the only Chicago-based artist to receive a Black Rock City Honoraria grant.

To finish his project, McCarty is raising an additional $10,000 to complete the project through Kickstarter, and, as of Wednesday, was more than 90 percent to his goal.

The news that he received the grant was a complete shock to him.

The world of Burning Man is high-profile and global.

"With a lot of [music] festivals, they always want 120 feet of art, but their budgets don’t always represent that," McCarty said. "It ends up being a s--- ton of work, and it's hard to get credited. The market you are in front of is a bunch of tripping 18-year-olds who are not exactly who you want your end client to be.” 

McCarty has been working on the Pulse Portal since March, which will be composed of dichroic acrylic sheets forming an arch that reaches 16 feet in the air.

He has three iron workers and two lighting experts helping him complete the portal.

"I think the experience of looking into the portal will be like gazing into an infinity, but instead of seeing the end, infinity is staring back at you," McCarty said.

Already four couples from countries all over the world, including France, England and Australia, have contacted him about getting married under the arch during the weeklong event.

The project is by far the biggest for the artist, who also works on projection mapping for concerts.

To prepare for the desert-based week, which has grown into one of the most culturally significant events of the year for many in the arts and tech scenes, McCarty met with structural engineers to run tests on whether his creation could withstand winds of up to 100 miles per hour.

"It's like building a mini building, almost, in the level of complexity," he said.

Burning Man, which is held the last week in August, will be attended by about 70,000 people and is capped off with the burning of a giant wooden "man" at the end of the week.

Many artists who create works for Burning Man choose to burn their pieces at the end of the week with the wooden man.

McCarty said he doesn't plan to burn his arch, rather he hopes it has a second life.

"A lot of people burn their work, and there is an important emotional reason for that, but for me, I really don't like to see the work burned," he said. "I prefer to see it reused and repurposed."

That could mean having it displayed at another festival or repurposing parts of the arch into another sculpture.

Either way, McCarty said he feels like this is a step into a new part of his life.

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is this afternoon," he said. "That’s where I’m at with this."

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