The Bellevue Arts Museum loves Burners, apparently. Playa Made: The Jewelry of Burning Man, which opened officially today, displays over 200 pieces of jewelry made at the nine day long festival in Black Rock City, Nevada. Featuring jewelry from 60 artists (amateur and professional alike) and the photography of George Post, the pieces come from the collection of Christine Kristen a.k.a. Lady Bee (you can see her name in the picture above), the Burning Man’s archivist, art collection manager, and photo gallery editor.
The exhibition is modeled to emphasize some of the ten principles of the festival: radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leave no trace. Like, for example, all of the jewelry in the show was given to Ladybee, not sold or bought.
It’s hard for me not to roll my eyes at some of the language and principles espoused by people who attend the festival and this exhibition—especially since it’s become less hippie and more techie—but I do like the crust-punkness of some of the pieces. They look as if they are artifacts from another planet, rife with weird imagery (and energy). And while I think the exhibition would really resonate with people who have made the trek out to Nevada during Labor Day weekend, there are some interesting pieces within the show that I think are worth looking at:
