Metal Thought Flow

Picture by Katie Hazard, 2004

"Thought Flow" is my first larger work, standing roughly 6'6", with a radius of about 2'.
It is composed mostly of iron and steel.

It is essentially a fire fountain, with an external fuel pump that feeds kerosene through a fuel line to the top reservoir. Fuel flows out of the reservoir, cascading over each shaped metal piece.

I keep a strip of kevlar mesh in the top reservoir to act as a wick to start the kerosene flaming. Once the metal reaches its operating temperature, the kero boils on contact with the metal and does not require wicking for ignition.

The steel arms that suspend the metal segments are threaded and bolted to the iron piping support and the metal segments. I chose to do this instead of welding the piece together to allow me to dismantle it for shipping.

Here is a cheesy, hand-drawn schematic of the project.

I had an opportunity to present my project at Burning Man 2004 and 2005 on the Esplanade & 3:00.
On the playa, I used a car battery to power the fuel pump.
Also, I only put together two of the fuel channels, and (due to the limited size of my burn platform/fuel recepticle) only ran fuel down one of them.

Here is some footage my friend Cris took of the sculpture in action:

• TF1.mov: Quicktime, 59.1MB, 3:14
  This mostly just different shots of the fountain burning. Cris asks me for an artist's statement. I give him a lame one.
• TF2.mov: Quicktime, 5.3MB, 0:17
  My project did get some attention, and some people would stand around watching the flames for some time. It also puts off some nice heat, which is good on those cold desert nights.
• TF3.mov: Quicktime, 19MB, 1:02
  More people and burning footage. One of the fire fighters comes to check out my project. He saw the flowing fuel and was concerned. (We have to be careful not to burn scar the playa.) Then he checked it out, saw that I had a burn platform for the flaming fuel that wasn't consumed and okayed it. He hung around for a few minutes and told me he liked watching it.

When I was dismantling this to load it for shippment back to Boston, I discovered that after two nights of operation, "Thought Flow" had a good millimeter or so of carbon caked all over it, as did I when I was finished.

- bhk