Stewart Harvey • The Quiet Fire
September 5–27, 2008

23 Sandy Gallery is pleased to present The Quiet Fire, photographs of art and performance in the landscape of Burning Man by Portland photographer Stewart Harvey. The show will open Friday, September 5 and runs through Saturday, September 27, 2008.

Artist Statement

My first Burning Man Experience was in 1989 at Baker Beach in San Francisco. I’d taken my son and a friend to see the famous “hippy beach party” his Uncle Larry had concocted. A year later, after the event had been driven out of San Francisco, Bryan and I drove 600 miles to the Black Rock Desert, where we witnessed what was on the verge of becoming a counter-cultural phenomenon. Although at the time there were only about 60 or so of us that attended that first Labor Day weekend burning, it was clear to me then that with the kind of innovative thinking, and steady determination I knew my brother possessed, this gathering had enormous potential for becoming a life altering experience.

The reason came in two parts: my brother’s twin thesis that if you allow people the complete freedom for “radical self expression,” they will produce amazing things, and that this event will have “no spectators,” everyone present must be a participant in the show.

As it turns out, people are attracted to the event from all over the world. It is one of the few genuine experiences” you can have without feeling like you been taken in by great corporate shell game. It’s not for everyone, of course, but last year the event attracted 47,000 worldwide souls.

There is one more vital ingredient to the success of Burning Man: their good fortune in deciding, rather by chance as it turns out, to move the event to the Black Rock Playa. There are seven kinds of Hell in the desert, but it also provides acres of visual magic. The scale for creation is limitless, and the skies are alive as an ever-changing backdrop. It allows the artists to realize their grandest visions, and for a photographer it provides non-stop inspiration. For me, the surreal juxtaposition of thousands of people inhabiting an absolutely pristine landscape is endlessly stimulating. It’s when I feel the rhythm of life on earth most profoundly.

Biography

Stewart Harvey’s photographs have been exhibited and published widely during his 30-year professional career in Portland, Oregon. He is a recent recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, and his work is in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, and several university archives.

Two exhibition photographs (Walking Man, and Reverend and Mrs. Larry Haynes), were published in the Katrina Exposed book, and are included in the print collection of New Orleans Museum of Art. In 2008, the State Museum of Louisiana purchased 24 of his New Orleans Sketchbook prints.

Harvey has been photographing the Burning Man Event since 1989. His work has been widely published in both magazines and hard cover books. Most recently as one of four featured photographers in Burning Book, Simon & Schuster, 2007.