San Marcos → Black Rock City, 2012.
Not a group that existed before. Not a group that stayed after. A crew that assembled around a build.
The Caroushell was a San Diego CORE project: twenty feet round, twenty feet tall, ocean-themed, rotating. It was designed to burn. Eight months of Sundays — thirty-two build days, a crew of four to twenty, roughly 350 person-days total. Built in San Marcos, disassembled, trucked to the playa, rebuilt in five days.
It ran for a week. On Thursday, they burned it.
The crew:
- Brandie Maddalena — art lead; conceived and designed the piece
- David Timms — build lead
- Paul Williamson — electronics; 4-button lighting controller, twenty sequences
- Mark “JP” Anderson — site manager; playa name Jesus the Penis
- James Howard — fire lead; the burn, fire vortex out the top
- Elaine “Stinger” Eno — ran the Kickstarter; SD Ranger / DPW
- Jim Robbs (LA/Youtopia), Michelle Thompson, Erica Dawson / Sadhaka Swick, Karl Dawson, Whitney-Star Sine Nomine, Nicole Hickman “Miss Information,” and up to 60 volunteers
- Fred Heald — “not even on the list” — volunteer crew
What they don’t tell you when you’re hammering and sawing on Sundays for eight months is what it feels like to watch the thing go. You build a community, with the art piece at the center. You burn the art piece, and the community is welded together.
See also: Building and Burning Caroushell