Nevada’s Burning Man event has become internationally known with about 80,000 participants from all over the world expected this year. The art portion of the annual festival got its start back in 1992 and now, extraordinary art is one of Burning Man's main attractions.
My father-in-law, artist and University Nevada, Reno professor Jim McCormick, installed a monumental, cartographic grid sculpture titled “Vista Revisited” on the Black Rock playa in 1992. The large piece, which he had created while he was on sabbatical leave from UNR in 1989, had been shown previously at the university under the title, “Vista”. Two other primary works on display at Burning Man that year were three wicker “women” by British artist Serena de la Hey and a sculpture titled “Waterway” by Gregg Schlanger.
Jim had retired earlier that same year, with a Governor’s Arts Award, UNR’s Distinguished Faculty Award, and many other awards under his belt. As a key advocate for the arts in Nevada, he loved the challenge of bringing art to the “canvas” of the Black Rock desert.
Jim’s “Vista Revisited” was a 320 foot long cross, composed of individual boxes measuring 12' x 12' x 1.5' that formed a huge compass that oriented toward the 40-foot-tall Burning Man sculpture.
In the very first issue of Building/Burning/Man: Newsletter of the Burning Man Project, June 1992, Volume 1 No. 1, Richard Washburn discussed Jim's installation in his column "Guest Artists." He wrote, "This year, for the first ime, the Black Rock festivities will include works and performances by guest artists...All works will have been designed with the surreal, empty desert flats in mind...Nevada artists will be represented by Jim McCormick, chair of the University of Nevada-Reno's art department which will display a work which by his own admission, resists description. Consisting of 1,000 moveable wood and foam-core modules, the work is reconfigured and retitled every time it is shown in a new environment. Though currently on display in the confines of a gallery, entitled "Vista" and meant as a statement about the human obsession with measuring and dividing, the character of the piece will doubtless undergo a radical change when it is shown outdoors for the first time."
The world is always full of surprising connections. One of my sons-in-law has worked with teams on a number of sound and art projects for Burning Man, and one of my stepdaughters helped weld a large pipe dome structure for a Burning Man camp. And several years ago, before I even realized that Jim had installed one of the first pieces of artwork at Burning Man in Nevada, I went to the festival with an economic development group consisting of representatives from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, USDA Rural Development, the City of Fernley, etc. We embarked on a “ship”, a double decker bus re-purposed as a ship on wheels, with the playa as the sea. Burning Man art covers an enormous area, but the ship tour allowed us to take it all in from the ship’s portholes and upper deck, with stops along the way at central art structures such as the Temple.
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