well, lovelies, alas. it’s been a few weeks since our last update! we’ve been keeping busy making progress on the Angel of the Apocalypse. lots of lotus girl hours going in to grinding and buffing to get our feathers shiny and pretty, modeling the new body frame, building and testing new gorgeous flame effects and forging ahead with electronic repair and testing on Soma.

we’re underway with fabrication of the body. before we know it, December will be here and time will be running short to get AoA to Toronto for her grand redux debut! If you’re curious about what’s up at the Box Shop and want to get your hands on some metal, come on down to see us! We have our weekly meeting Wednesday night at 7:30, and we most definitely welcome newbies no matter what your skill level is. Drop us a line if you’ve got questions or just come on down.

while we’ve been busy lil kitties over at the Box Shop getting the Angel of the Apocalypse ready for Toronto, us Lotus Girls have managed to find time to have a wee bit of fun. for the past few weeks, it’s been photo shoot madness! lotus girls gettin dolled up (and sometimes even oiled up), looking fierce with fire and metal for our annual gift to you: the 2010 Flaming Lotus Girl calendar! Take a sneak peek at these shots…and stay tuned for how you can get these lovelies on your wall!

thanks to two of the lotus girls’ very own, sooz cammack and george schaller, we’ve got an amazing time laspe of soma from the desert this year from construction to deconstruction and everything in between.

watch it while listening to your favorite soundtrack. just about anything will do…my personal soundtrack was on www.kcrw.com with “Fight for You” by Morgan Page on deck. seemed to work pretty well.

enjoy the view.

meows!

welcome to a (hopefully) new weekly installment of lotus girl updates from our trials, tribulations and ridiculous adventures at the Box Shop! we trust you will be thrilled and intrigued at every turn as we dazzle you with tales of seam welding and sculpture repair and flame effect madness!

lots of lotus girls are hard at work preparing the Angel of the Apocalypse for its debut in Toronto in late January 2010 at the WinterCity 2009 festival. for the past few weeks, on any given night, you can find the lotus girls scurrying about, learning how to seam weld stainless sheet, putting together plans for the body and head of the sculpture, and grinding our hearts out to make the feathers shiny and pretty for their big show.

today was a day like any other day. grinder in hand, respirator just starting to itch, hot sun beating down on my shoulders. i took a break to find yet another extension cord and walked into the shop. just when i thought the day might proceed without event, i discover quite the opposite was true inside.

two of our very own fabulous photographers were shooting lots of lotus girls for our upcoming 2010 FLG calendar (shameless plug for merchandise here…check out the 2009 calendar here). with the photographers at the ready, one of our faves, brent, was getting his due in the spotlight. i think the shot speaks for itself. it was a tremendously fun day. in the midst of grinding and seam welding, the lotus girls certainly always know how to have a good time. we hope to have the calendar ready before the holidays, just in time for all that gift giving!

stayed tuned for more adventures from the box shop!

until then, meows!

xoxo

catie

© 2009 George Schaller

Thanks to everyone who came out to Soma this year to enjoy its light and fire and support the Flaming Lotus Girls. We do what we do because of all of you! This year, we had an extra-special addition to our fire repertoire: the sparkle poof. The sparkle poofs are propane-fueled, titanium-

© 2009 Sue Cammack

injected poofers that so many of you got to fire off by pushing those wonderful bronze buttons on the legs of the lower cell body of Soma.

Each sparkle poof fixture was hand-crafted out of stainless steel and copper, carefully wrought into flaring petals shooting out from the upper cell body. Like all the aspects of our work, much time, energy, expense and love went into their creation.

Sadly, one of these sparkle poof fixtures was taken from the playa.

On Monday evening, the day the event closed, these fixtures were placed next to our container. They were to be loaded up with all the other bits and bobs of Soma on Tuesday morning for transport back to San Francisco. Much to our dismay, one of these beautiful fixtures was missing when we returned to our site for packing. It seems someone ‘borrowed’ a sparkle poof for themselves.

© 2009 Sue Cammack

We are putting a call out to try to recover this essential piece of Soma. She’s just not complete without it. In order to run the sparkle poofs, we’ll have to make another fixture – an endeavor which requires even more time, energy, expense and love, all of which we’re currently expending on other upcoming projects and events.

The art people create for the playa isn’t meant to be a souvenir. It is meant to have a life beyond the desert where people around the globe can explore and appreciate the experience of participatory art in their own backyards, having their minds blown by the power of creativity just like we get to at Burning Man. Soma is no different.

© 2009 Michi Catanese

If you have any knowledge of where our little sparkle poof may have landed, please email info@flaminglotus.com and put SPARKLE POOF in the subject line. We’re not interested in blame or shame or anything of the sort. We can even arrange to have her delivered to a neutral location. Or, she can be mailed to the following address, no questions asked:

Flaming Lotus Girls
548 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94110

We’d just like her back. As soon as we can get her.

Sorry peeps but the class for Saturday the 9th is at capacity and we have to cap our “admissions.” Not to worry though, wemihgt be having another class in the very near future. We will keep you posted!!!

Love,

the FLG xoxoxo

The crowd was very different from Burning Man, but they weren’t the yahoos I  think we were all expecting.  I think that sort of event really breeds spectating, so participating (by pushing buttons or by interacting with the art in whatever bizarre, over-the-top way one can conceive of) just isn’t within that crowd’s purview.

I heard lots and lots of compliments, wows, and general excitement and amazement.  Lot’s of people were asking whether it breathed fire / calling it a dragon. The kids at the festival just *adored* it and had a great time mashing buttons and controlling the jaw on occasion.  And a few people came up and mentioned they’d seen it before at Burning Man and really loved it and our work!

Overall a good, but very different experience.  I’m glad I went, and the lack of dust is *really* nice (walking barefoot on grass after a long day of work is devine!), but it certainly doesn’t replace Burning Man.

- Beth

FLG are looking for a structural engineer to help us bring to life our latest creation…Soma. Do you know someone who can help? Emailinfo@flaminglotus.com!

Flaming Lotus Girls are busy at work on our latest fire sculpture – Soma – for Burning Man 2009. We’re looking for some expert engineering help and support. What we need: an engineering whiz to give us structural guidance. Using our drawings and material specifications (mostly in stainless steel), this whiz will do some basic calculations to make sure the sculpture is a) strong enough to support its weight; and b) able to be freestanding. In gratitude for this help, we’ll be offering a ticket to Burning Man…and our everlasting love and affection. If you can help or know someone else who can, please contact us: info@flaminglotus.com.

For general information about FLG, check out our site! www.flaminglotus.com

Friday night it was still a little chilly out there and the serpent’s coil was crammed full of people huddling for warmth. Even on the other nights, when it was warm, people would crowd around and sit about the fire, and stay long after we’d turned off the fire, and even the lights.

Before we left, the geeks had heard a lot about how people would be out of control and how it was a different crowd from Burning Man (which it was). But people were almost a little too respectful–we had to really invite them in to play with the buttons, it seemed. I didn’t hear about anyone trying to climb on the piece. Maybe it’s the power of the fire, but even very drunk messed up people were just having fun and wanted to talk and were just excited.