Odyssey by Clayton Blake Art
I’ve learned over the years not to make too many plans at BM, so I only had one person I knew I was going to try and have on the podcast, the legendary Playa Pete. I knew where he was camping so I just had to catch him when he was home. He was making breakfast the second time I went over. He’s a brilliant storyteller so I knew I’d just have to press record and off he’d go, and he didn’t disappoint. He spoke about how he first heard about BM, his first trip out there and nearly leaving the next morning, starting the first Airport, what he learned about dealing with rude hecklers, a spontaneous art performance that nearly had him calling an ambulance, Larry’s T-Shirt and bringing his Mom to BM.
The other 3 people I bumped into were pure BM, “what are the chances” One was Stewart Harvey, who is Larry Harvey’s brother. Larry Harvey for those who don’t know, started BM, Stewart had amazing stories about Larry and the beginnings of Center Camp, The Man, Coffee, Costumes, laundering money and so much more.
After I’d talked to Stewart, I thought, you know it would be good to talk to some artists and I had two in particular in mind, Michael Garlington @michaelgarlington1 who brought Chapel Of Babel this year and Christopher Schardt @christopher.schardt who brought Mariposa.
But then the rain came and all plans of getting anyone else on the podcast went out the window. But when I went for a walk in the mud, on the Sunday, the day I should have been flying back to Ireland, but couldn’t because no-one was allowed to leave until the mud dried up, I bumped into Victoria Rose Enanoff, who had previously been in our camp, while she was helping to take down her new camp, Pink Heart. While we were chatting about Pink Heart, she spotted Christopher Schardt,
introduced us and he talked to me, there and then. Christopher talked about his previous Art pieces including everyones favourite, Parluna and his current masterpiece, Maraposa.
The next day, Monday, the rain stopped and it finally dried up, so I went for a spin on my bike and headed over to Chapel of Babel for one last look before they burned it later that night and I spotted Michael Garlington, busy getting it ready to burn. I asked him if I could talk to him sometime about his art and he said, let’s do it now. He spoke about how he started his art journey at BM, his earlier large scale pieces, Photo Chapel, Totem of Confession and of course Chapel of Babel.
After hearing Stewart and Pete talk about the exact same thing that happened 30 years ago, from completely different viewpoints, I thought rather than have each guest on, one after the other, I’d mix it up a little and go back and forward in the timeline.
