Heron At Home

The Heron is currently watching over Taos Mesa Brewing~ resting, hibernating as the snow and the star filled skies shimmer through the Winter season. Awaiting warmer weather and awaiting dancers, aerialists and creative mayhem once again.

Voodoo Festival, New Orleans 2011

Another awesome festival for the Heron! What a perfect place to celebrate HALLOWEEN! Thank you to the fabulous crew- what a good team! Christian, Genevieve, Oswald, Gregory, Toby, Ceebass, Cedar, and of course- little Kodiak!!

Local paper write up HERE.

NOLA!

The Heron will be showing off at the New Orleans VOODOO Festival 2011 over Halloween weekend!
Should be pretty amazing, as it will have good company with Christian Ristow's new sculpture, Fledgeling, as well as a local aerial performance troupe, Mystic Ponies, working on the Heron! The wings will have FIRE this time as well!
See you over the Bayou!

The Year in Review

Herald made the cover of the Taos News Tempo for the Year in Review- The Best of 2009- These are my favorite pictures of the project in review to date- mostly at Burning Man. Thanks to the artistic talents of photographers Kate Russell and Sadaf Rassoul Cameron. Now the Heron is waiting for its next calling- could be Europe, the far East, could be within the US. I will update when it travels! In the meantime I am busy working on yet another sculpture for Burning Man, this one is an interactive sound sculpture called- Caged Pulse Jets. Yes, of course, there is a blog for this one too...click LOUD and you will be taken there!

Happy New Year! The Heron beckons travel for 2010!

BURNING MAN 2009

I took no pictures....in hopes of finding what other people saw in theirs, here are a few that I love.
photocredit- Extramatic

"Build it and they will come"

Now that was FANTASTIC! What a turn out!! And what amazing music, shadow puppets and aerial artists! It was a surreal space working the Heron and watching performers interact with it in various daring poses. Truly dreamlike for me. Thank you Taos, for the support and the Love! (and Santa Fe too!) Pictures taken by Sadaf Rassoul, Alisa Ritchie, Beth Hill, Howie Roemer

Mesa Burning Man

Running the Heron

HERON DEBUT SUNDAY AUGUST 16th

Yes it's true!!! Come see the Heron in all its new paint and glory this Sunday from 5-9 at the "Steel Ranch" in Taos! There will be continuous performances on the Heron throughout the evening by Wise Fool NM, Anna Pardenik & the Vermont Paino Moving Co., The Circus of Tiny Invisibilty, The Flying desert Brigade, KFire, and Tea and Puppet Theatre-performed within a 12' mobile Hoop skirt!!! Dj's for the evening include Oliver, Jeremy Blike and Paul Feathericci. This will be a very unique "art opening" not to be missed! There will be Harlan's Green Chili and beverages available too. This is a benefit show for the Heron Project, and suggested donation is $10.
Sunday, August 16th 5-9PM
Directions: Drive across Gorge Bridge, Turn hard left onto West Rim Rd (less than a mile after Bridge) Go 1.5Miles- look to your Left! Carpool if you can- parking along side road. Entrance is by tall Ranch Gate- see you there! This is a Kid friendly event!

A Fresh Coat of Paint~

Well, painting is a BIG deal. The Heron painting got off to a slow start- waiting out a few days of turbulent weather, finding the right equipment and working with a diminished workforce- the Heron got primed and painted in three days after all. I chose to paint it white- a slightly off white/bone white-I wanted a neutral color that would also be inviting and not too hot to climb in the heat of the day. I also figure it can be accentuated with various colored lighting. The white added a surreal quality- also shadowing itself beautifully through the trussing. My amazing crew helped put it up today- one final time before it goes to the Playa. The build was still a seven hour ordeal- again facing the challenges of Christian's forklift, which makes this operation very delicate as we are lifting a 27' structure(in it's retracted position) with a mast that goes 19'-8". It's scary and it sure did not help to work around a massive hail storm including thunder and lightning! Now it is up...standing tall and looking regal, for a Taos debut, on August 16th, which I will impart more details about in a few days-but for now, the waxing moon and the Heron meet again.

2025LBS!

We load tested the Heron yesterday- a very hot, dry, dusty mesa day. First we started with Christian's first ever robot- his spider walking robot- weighing about 600Lbs. We rigged the bot from the nose of the beak and lifted it into the air several times, and swung it around to check for twisting, and balance. So far so good. Then we slung the Manipulatrix from the beak, a robot weighing 2025LBS and lifted it up a few inches. The Heron seemed fine, though it was tricky to dial in the ratio between the hydraulic winch and the hydraulic cylinders- so they would work together not in opposition. The winch cable got extremely tight, and semed to be taking more weight than it should. We added to two more flow control valves to the system and played with the flow- to various degrees of success. We concluded that the flow would have to be adjusted to each specific lift weight- each time. For Burning Man we will adjust it to lift max two people at the same time. That should be a happy medium for the winch and cylinders with and without a load. It has been so amazing to see it up- looks just like the miniature model...I could not resist to monkey around on it this morning- so Gregory and I played on Herald for the first time, before the wind kicked up. It was stupendously fun! Tomorrow it comes down for paint prep- and I will take as much help as I can get to get the grease and dirt of the metal so we can spray it soon! Let me know if you want to help paint prep!

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words...

Yesterday-Epic! Today-movement and load test!

Fabrication Fancy

There are always a few more things that need to be done, then there are a few things that would just look too great, so they become things to do as well. We are so close... Today we fed the hydro lines inside the Heron walls- a great idea to keep the lines out of the way. The outriggers are done including the bracing for the actual outrigger. Loads of bolts needed here. It has been fun climbing the first section of the Heron with the outriggers attached- it sure does feel like it's anchored down-STURDY. The mid body is now attached to the head-and the cylinders are mounted. The sheaves are in place, as well as the winch- tomorrow we roll the cable on and get it ready for it's final assembly- on Tuesday! The power unit sounds OK, still need to do a bit of work on that- but test worthy it is. I'll leave this post with a view from when I closed up the shop this evening- the moon rise over the mesa...

To Do Lists...

It's looking great! This week flew by in the shop with Christian, Gregory, Juniper and Toby putting in some serious hours- and as it is with talented help- the Heron to do list is shrinking! Christian has been tenaciously working on the hydraulic cylinder attachments on the head and on the upper body- which look indestructible. We decided to add plates on the sides of the head to spread the "up" force of the cylinders to the main two rails. The Pulley truss and all it's fine compound angles was a project Juniper took on-it looks beautiful- now I will weld it on to the main body and the entire outline of the crane is done. The outriggers are done, but still need bracing- and they are currently attached to the new 16" sub base. Tomorrow we will attempt to attach the sub base to the main body- with the help of our overhead hoist and Otis, the forklift. No easy feat, as the shop clearance is 14'-9" and the new dimension of the bottom part of the Heron is 13'-5"- not that much wiggle room. I am also posting a pic of the progress of the power unit build! Christian jumped over to work on that and hooked most of the lines and built a sweet fuel filler box that will be exposed after it gets sheathed.
He is such a super star! I have welded most all on the Heron so far- starting to wonder how many hundreds and hundreds of feet of beads I have run by now...and more to go, but the
list is shrinking!