Ryan's visit on fire

On top of Ryan visiting us in the momentous Most-Fires-Ever-Burning- All-At-Once-In-California, Ryan, Julie and Craig decided to go celebrate more fires (and other art) last night in Oakland. This was the 2008 Fire Arts Festival at the Crucible (same place we took our welding class). Lots of fun, amazing, cool stuff, and plenty of fire.

This was probably the coolest thing there: a vortex of fire. Two guys in proximity suits spraying gasoline into a mini-tornado made by a dozen industrial fans. The video doesn't do it justice: the colors of the fire were amazing (not white like on the video) and some of them leaped up to 30+ feet in the air, spinning like a Wizard of Oz twister. Wow.



Also cool was a column of fire burning up through a block of ice. The flames were propane and gave off a great green flame at times, along with other interesting effects from the introduction of a few different sized pieces of metal art. There were even a couple of Tesla coils that tossed big volts of electricity all over the place -- even onto a couple of performers with metal suits (they danced around under the coil as the bolt hit them and dispersed through a grounded metal floor!).