For residents of West Oakland, the sky-scorching flame-bursts and heavens-reaching lightning-crackles lighting up the night sky above Seventh Street on July 14 & 15 can mean only one thing – it’s time, once again, for The Crucible’s annual Fire Arts Festival.
Photo by Dennis Dowling
THE CRUCIBLE PREPARES FOR THE SIXTH ANNUAL FINE ARTS FESTIVAL
By Bill Picture
Published: July, 2006
For residents of West Oakland, the sky-scorching flame-bursts and heavens-reaching lightning-crackles lighting up the night sky above Seventh Street on July 14 & 15 can mean only one thing – it’s time, once again, for The Crucible’s annual Fire Arts Festival.
The event is comprised of a unique gathering of flame-loving visual artists and performers. 9-1-1 dispatchers in the East Bay have already been notified so that they can help quell the fears of any panicky locals who might phone in with reports of mysterious balls of fire in the sky.
Over the course of the Fire Arts Festival’s six-year history, The Crucible, the West Oakland-based arts education facility that hosts the event, has forged unlikely friendships with the very city agencies whose job it is to put out blazes, Oakland’s fire and police departments.
That relationship is so strong, that both agencies have signed on as official sponsors of the Fire Arts Festival. And, earlier this year, The Crucible used its good standing with the Oakland fire and police departments to put in a good word with the City of San Francisco on behalf of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, which was in the process of securing the permits it needed to host its own similar event. That event, the first San Francisco Fire Arts Exposition, took place this past May at Monster Park.
More than 5,000 people are expected to turn out for The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival, which includes a benefit art auction and a series of daytime classes and fire-safety workshops at The Crucible, followed by performances and demonstrations in the evenings at a 200,000-square-foot outdoor space just across the street.
As the name of the event implies, the Fire Arts Festival’s lineup skews heavily pyro. But a fair number of non-flammable acts, including world-class ethnic dance ensembles, musicians, spoken word artists and a clown troupe from nearby Prescott Elementary School, are also being featured this year.
The diversity of the lineup, organizers say, reflects the breadth of The Crucible’s class schedule. With all the fires being set and put out at the event, it’s easy to forget that The Crucible started off in 1999 humbly offering instruction to artists in centuries-old industrial arts techniques, such as blacksmithing, casting and glass-blowing.
Over the last seven years, however, The Crucible has expanded its focus to include mechanical art, light-based art and performance-based art, including crowd-pleasing techniques such as fire-dancing, fire-breathing and stilt-walking.
As The Crucible’s class schedule has grown (from just ten courses in 1999 to 150 courses in 2006), so too has the number of students. In 1999, 70 students attended classes at The Crucible. Last year’s attendance topped 4,000 students.
And we’re getting all different types of people now, adds The Crucible’s founder and executive director, Michael Sturtz. In the beginning, it was all artists. Now, we have accountants coming and taking stone-carving classes to help de-stress.
When looking curating this year’s event, which officially kicks off on July 12 with a free, sneak peak at some of the art installations that will be adorning the outer-Playa at the 2006 Burning Man festival, organizers didn’t need to look much further than their backyard. All but a handful of the fifty-or-so participating artists and performers are from the Bay Area.
The reason for that, according to Sturtz, is that the Bay Area, birthplace of Burning Man, has always fostered creativity and encouraged an out-of-the-box approach to thinking, living and self-expression. There’s a great appreciation for art and music and dance here, he says.
The Sixth Annual
Fire Arts Festival
July 12-15
The Crucible
1260 7th St., Oakland
Tickets: $30 each day, July 14 & 15
Two-day pass $50
July 13 art auction $125
