Arts/Music Festival Volunteer Instead of JPL :)

I didn’t go to NASA this past week because I was a volunteer at an arts and music festival held in the high mountain desert of Los Coyotes Indian Reservation. The festival is called Desert Hearts, and really only culminates in a festival

I actually first started thinking about applying to volunteer after we visited the Integratron and the lady who talked to us (I'm the worst with names) was saying how she met a lot of her current artistic connections at Burning Man. Desert Hearts is a younger festival than Burning Man, but has a very similar set of goals and artistic purpose, seeing itself as a family of artists coming together to make and experience art in an immersive way.  

It's been on my artistic bucket list for so long to go into a festival and install, and I finally have that opportunity thanks to last-minute drop out volunteers. My aspirations of creating an installation ended up more lame than I was hoping, since it was so incredibly cold that people’s willingness to get their fingers or brushes into my cold paint was less than exciting. Anything other than eating warm food seemed like a waste of taking gloves off. However, I carried face paints with me everywhere, offering to face paint as a kind of gift to give away to everyone I met.

And the artists there…they were incredible. The stage was 24 hours, as the festival was intended to have one stage, one vibe, for 100 straight hours of music over the entire weekend. And surrounding the stage 24/7 were artists. Painting, spinning fire, hula-hooping, making jewelry…I met one artist who I reconnected with later at an event in LA and offered me an apprenticeship making custom-made rings and metalworked jewelry. I met another artist who is dedicated to elaborate moving origami works. I think I bugged quite a few artists by getting way too stoked to talk to them artist-to-artist while they were painting and would way rather just focus than listen to me talk about how I paint and am moved by how I got to see their process.

Overall. Wow. By far the most incredible and collaborative community of artists I’ve ever gotten to interact with outside of a studio classroom. So encouraging. So inspiring.