Testimonials – Excerpts from some of the emails received below
“Wow! I was shocked by how my body and muscles aligned with it. The geometry of my form coming in and out of focus through it.”
“I was immediately drawn to it. I crawled in and felt transported to a very special place. I found refuge in the portal.”
“It really is a portal. I felt transcended, out of myself, through time and space, through every particle…”
The following emails have been received regarding experiences of the Portals at Burning Man:
“I wanted to just touch base with you and THANK YOU for the amazing piece that you brought out to the playa. Your piece had a great impact on me. (For several reasons.) I wish that I had stayed there for many more hours that night. Once I was alone, I had the chance to really interact with it. WOW. I was shocked by how my body and muscles aligned with it. The geometry of my form coming into and out of focus through it. As I was sitting there and bending, I had all kinds of images coming through my mind. I told myself that I HAD to spend more time with it some day to really capture these ideas.”
“I just got back from BRC last night. I wanted to tell you that I absolutely loved your Amethyst Portal. I happened upon it Sunday morning after dancing during the Sunrise set. It was in the middle of the dust storm and your piece just appeared in front of me during a small break in the whiteout. I was immediately drawn to it. I crawled in and felt transported to a very different place. I found refuge in the portal during the dust-storm. It was relaxing and amazing. I loved the low frequency humming and sounds from the structure. I have to say that I had the most amazing experience of my whole burn within your portal. In fact my experience there will be something that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life. Thank you for creating such a wonderful piece and sharing it with myself and the rest of the community. It has made an incredible impact, one that is extremely hard to convey in words… Thanks for the love, spirit, and generosity.”
“I was fortunate enough to happen across The Sapphire Portal this year, and it quickly became one of my most favorite things at the Burn! I can’t even put into words all the thoughts, images, and feelings that were experienced while enjoying the zen-like tranquility of the seemingly alternate dimension that the Portal took me to. It also provided a much needed reprieve from the constant electronica pulse of the playa. Every time I visited the Portal, the atmosphere inside was reverently serene, and my personal experience would be slightly different than the last time, yet consistently left me feeling refreshed and even recharged somehow.
If this is coming off a bit on the verbose side, it’s only because I’m trying to find the thousand+ words necessary to paint the picture of an experience I appreciated immensely. I just wanted to let you know how much I loved your creation.
with sincerity.”
“The Sapphire Portal was my favorite thing out there on the playa… It really is a portal. I felt transcended, outside of myself, through time and space, through every particle of playa dust, vibrating through the cells of my cuddle-partners, around the world and back to myself resting contently in the middle of a sky-blue portal. Thank you for sharing this special gift with the world.”
“I wanted to thank you for bringing the Sapphire Portal to the playa this year. Without going into much detail, please understand that the Portal at sunrise following the Man burning (the second time) was the host of one of my most beautiful playa moments in my years of attending Burning Man. During the day, I was struck by the respect and sanctity that the piece invoked, and that one could have any number of experiences in its embrace. The morning after the burn I was surprised and delighted to see that it had opened to greet the sunrise.
Thank you again, and I hope that you continue to bring such wonderous works to the playa.”
“We met briefly at BM. I am a film maker friend of Daniel Pinchbeck, Joao is my name…
I wanted to express that your piece was absolutely incredible, and that it transcends Art in My opinion.
When the Theta waves where played in the sapphire portal, I trully felt it was a spiritual experience in multidimensionality, similar to what you go through under DMT or ayhuaska. It is absolute genius…
I had to keep on going back there every day…”
“It was my favorite moment on the playa this year, After a week of dust storms and infighting at my camp- I stumbled upon the sculpture, climbed into the round/heart opening, and found to my delight that it purred. I have a bad back injury, and found the round support of the metal against my back with the purring vibration to be very soothing. I was soothed to a place of peace, looking up at the sky, and back at the city. It was amazing.Thanks for making it. To discover that the round opening was also a heart was magical.”
“Hi, my name is Nate Smith, I do the fire vortex work at Burning Man. On Saturday night of the event, My friend Gary dragged me away from my project and took me out to see some of the stuff out in the deep playa. I just want to tell you that I loved your piece. It was great to climb up in it and have the city outlined in the hole. Very magical. The vibration and sound were wonderful as well, I still have no idea how you did it. Thank you for your work., I’m glad I got the opportunity to experience it.”
“I really enjoyed your contribution to the art on the playa this year, and I hope we’ll see more of it in the future. I love interactive art and spending time (twice) cradled in the window of your portal was a wonderful, other-worldly and meditative experience. I won’t forget about it; thank you!”
“I just wanted to thank you for a wonderful piece. I usually don’t like seeing something return to the playa, but I was thrilled to get to see and feel it again. This time around we had a newbie to share it with. Thank you.”
“We thought you might like to hear about our 2004 BM experience with your art installation.
At BM 2004, one of our favorite experiences, perhaps our very favorite and most moving, took place at your “Diamond Portal”, which my brother John fondly nicknamed “Green Hole Sun”…it reminded him of the other sculpture in Volunteer Park. Here’s what happened on the night of the Temple Burn. Wild Bill ( my spouse) and Andreas (fellow Burner since 2001) and I were making our way toward the Temple on bikes that night. You may know Andreas, his brother Peter was with Taos Station in another year (I don’t think Peter was there in 2004). Andreas’ idea was that we park our bikes at the Portal and then walk the rest of the way. But when we got there, it seemed so inviting, and someone was up there by himself (I think – my memory could be just a little foggy). So we climbed up and joined him. Could it have been you?
We lay down low in the Portal, feet pointing in alternating directions, gazing out at the stars. From our perspective, there was no ground below, only the stars above. The sound we felt and heard emanating from within the Portal was like an engine. giving us the feeling that we were on a spaceship, floating peacefully through space. Then, the first “explorer” started humming, along with the engine sound of the spaceship. Perhaps he was humming all along, and I just didn’t notice until then. He persuaded all of us to hum along, And we did. Before long, some other people joined us in our little “spaceship”. I’m not sure how many we had up there, they came and went, staying different amounts of time. And somehow, we lost our sense of time. Perhaps it had something to do with not looking down at the ground.
Then the Temple began to burn…and our attention was drawn to it. It was almost as if we were a visiting alien spacecraft, observing from afar the habits of the local creatures. It was truly a beautiful sight. Instead of being up close, as we had originally planned, we viewed the Temple burn from such a distance that we could see the entire thing, and as you know it stretched a very wide distance across this year. Your Diamond Portal/Green Hole Sun was in every way a fantastic gift that you shared with the rest of the city. Thank You!”
“I have many magical moments on the playa, to which I am addicted. I was blessed by such a moment on the evening of the burn when, after getting a shot of the man just fitting inside the portal (from about 100yrds), I smoothed my body against the portal. I was unable to fit into the portal which was a cacophony of reverberating burners. I suddenly felt something happening that was much greater than the sum of its parts. Hard to explain, but somehow transporting. I was, however, slightly saddened by my distance from the core, which drew me in. I was happy to discovery that after talking to the participants, that the feeling I was experiencing was shared. Thank you for your vision.”
“Yes! Yes! Yes! I am so glad you put up a site dedicated to this amazing piece! I fell in love with it when I arrived around sunset one day, in a break between windstorms. The green side was warm in the sun, and I rubbed my back against it like a cat soaking in the warmth. Much to my surprise it was also purring!! I was fascinated and stayed around long enough to make two new friends. I never did get inside the portal, since I preferred the warm sunlit side near the base, but I enjoyed watching others lie in the tube. We thought it was recordings from space, pulsars. Until someone eventually arrived to check on the piece and I saw there was a bass guitar inside (or maybe someone told me that). I loved the idea that the sound was acoustically generated, when so much on the playa is not…”