As a child, I loved to paint and draw, and by the time I finished high school I had decided to devote myself to the making of art. I had lovely parents who encouraged me to pursue all of my interests, although being an artist wasn’t at the top of their list. Like many parents in the 1960s, they wanted me to learn a skill for which I’d earn a good living. And, like all parents during that turbulent decade, they were appalled when I headed down the hippie path — although I was a bit young, observing it all from my suburban Chicago high school. I devoted myself to the art studio, where I remained each day after school, and enjoyed the photography classes as well.
In the space of a few years, everything seemed to change: Suddenly, there was feminism, gay liberation, civil rights, free love, cannabis, psychedelics and, of course, the music. I’m grateful to have come of age during that time and I feel a special bond with my age mates; many of us were freed from conventional expectations and pursued lives outside the mainstream.
When I went to the University of Illinois, my world expanded considerably. In my suburban high school in the late 60s, there were very few Black students; but suddenly, I was surrounded by people of all ethnicities and persuasions, and I embraced the diversity. After getting a BFA, I moved to Chicago and completed an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, fully intending to pursue a gallery career.
Another great love of mine is travel and after I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1973, I set out on the “hippie trail” to India, hitchhiking from Paris to Afghanistan, where it became so hot that I turned around and went down to the Greek Islands and Morocco. In Marrakech, I visited an American friend who had joined the Peace Corps and was enamored of her life and work there. I knew that at some point I’d be signing up.
After grad school, instead of focusing on my art career, I joined the Peace Corps, specifically to go to West Africa. I’d been learning African dance during college and grad school and was fascinated by the Ghanaian instructors.
I was sent to Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom in South Africa, where I taught art in a rural secondary school. There, I had to adapt to rural life, after living in Chicago my whole life. I learned to pitch a tent, start a fire, and ride horses. Lesotho is not tropical, and the seasons are distinct, with extremely cold winters. Local crafts were not abundant, as survival was difficult. Soil erosion didn’t support healthy crops; and 60 percent of the men were working in the mines of South Africa.
As I was deeply interested in African culture and crafts, I asked to be transferred to West Africa, but no suitable programs were found. So I bought a ticket to Lagos, Nigeria, and began a year of hitchhiking across West Africa — from Nigeria to Togo, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Senegal.
A really valuable lesson I learned in West African villages is the importance of acknowledging other people; one didn’t ever pass another person without greeting them. To this day, I say hello to every person I pass on the street. Most folks are pleased and respond, but some simply look at me as if I’m crazy. I also speak with every cashier I meet in stores and anyone I encounter in public service jobs; it’s so important to recognize the humanity of these folks who have to do the same repetitive actions all day long. Please make contact with them!
When I returned to the U.S., I was not thrilled to be back in the Western world and signed up for the Peace Corps again. Meanwhile, I had met a group called Art Safari in Nigeria, and they asked me to lead a group of craftspeople to Ghana and Nigeria, so I was able to return there for a summer.
Then I was sent to Peace Corps Jamaica in 1979 to work at the Kingston School of Art. Having spent years in art school, I wanted a more authentic, rural experience, so I was sent to Runaway Bay, on the north coast, to help a group of wood-carvers develop a craft market at a fishing beach.
I loved working with them, and I go back often to visit. My life there was so healthy and active. I rode a bike, ran and swam in the ocean daily, and had a very healthy diet of fresh produce and seafood. For a tiny island, Jamaica is so rich in culture — the music, literature, theater, intuitive art and dance are prolific.
In 1982 I moved back to Chicago, where I focused on mixed media drawings. Eventually, I felt the urge to move to New York City, the great proving ground for artists. In Chicago, I was surrounded by an intimate community of peers, but when I moved to New York I became one of thousands of painters and sculptors all struggling to get their work seen in an intensely competitive environment.
I spent a lot of time, like everyone else, going to openings, dropping off slides at galleries and trying to meet critics, dealers and curators. All of this was like a second job, on top of making the art. It seemed as if the artists were making art for the other players in the art world, who had inside information on the nature of that work. For the general public, who didn’t have this special information, the work was confusing and out of reach.
I began to question the value system around me, which was ultimately exclusionary, market-driven and isolating. As I became more alienated from the world I had chosen to live in, I was no longer quite sure why I was making art anymore, and I stopped altogether. I still had the need to make things, however, and turned to jewelry.
My dear friend Robert had been going to Providence, Rhode Island, to Wolf E. Myrow, the motherlode of vintage jewelry findings and materials, and he convinced me to join him on one of his visits. I began making jewelry from vintage findings — notably Bakelite and brass stampings — and I loved making big, elaborate pins and necklaces.
In 1987, I spent a summer in Kenya as a leader for Crossroads Africa, a two-month program for university students who do community development work. Nearly all of the leaders are former Peace Corps volunteers. We lived in a Maasai village, Kajiado, where we built a school building. During this time, I collected traditional Maasai beadwork jewelry that had been used in traditional ceremonies and embedded with red laterite soil, unlike the jewelry made for tourists. After completing the schoolhouse, the students returned home and I traveled up to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
Later, as I approached 40, I found myself growing tired of the concrete jungle and wanting to be closer to nature. What American city had equal doses of culture and nature? San Francisco came to mind and, in 1991, I left New York and moved there. I started a small jewelry business, but was disappointed to see that my bigger, wilder pieces were not as marketable as smaller, more conventional ones. I had to tone down my work, and I didn’t find making multiples very fulfilling — I much preferred making one-of-a-kind pieces.
In August of 1995, on a whim, I drove to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada with a girlfriend, with only a vague idea of what I was journeying toward, having seen Burning Man in a list of summer festivals in the Bay Guardian. I was dazzled by the setting and the event, thrilled
to be part of the creativity, energy and goodwill of the community, and delighted that I had stumbled upon something I knew would change my life.
I found a group of people who were alienated, not only from the art world but from mainstream culture in general, and were doing something about it. Out on the playa, they were creating their own culture, which seemed to be based on humor, play, imagination, sharing, cooperation and personal responsibility. I felt I’d somehow come home, and I proceeded to become deeply involved in the community back in San Francisco as well as on the playa.
There wasn’t much art on the playa in 1995, but as more artists created bigger and more complex installations each year, it occurred to me that a new kind of art-making was evolving, completely outside of the mainstream art world. On the playa, artists weren’t attached to sole ownership of the work, which was community-based and communally built. Groups of artists and friends worked together on projects, sharing resources and collaborating instead of competing.
Most amazing was the sense that these artists were so far removed from notions of preciosity and market value that they were actually burning their work at the end of the event. They weren’t trying to attract a dealer or a collector; they weren’t trying to get into a gallery, nor were they looking for the attention of a critic. And they weren’t doing it solely for themselves — they were doing it for the experience and for the community.
In 1998, I was asked to help produce the first art exhibit about Burning Man at the San Francisco Art Commission Galleries. The purpose of the exhibit was not to sell art, but to show those who weren’t able to get out to the playa what was happening out there.
After working with these artists, I realized that I was much better suited to curating than making art. After the isolation of working alone in the studio and the struggle to survive in New York, I was very happy to be involved with a group of artists who were working together in this unique community.
For the first time, I felt connected to something much bigger than myself, having found a nascent art world I could believe in and to which I could apply my skills in a way that felt positive and oriented toward a new vision of art-making that wasn’t driven by commerce and marketing but by the collective joy of creating together.
In 1999, I was hired to be the Burning Man art curator, specifically to run the brand-new art grant program. Larry Harvey, its founder, and I reviewed proposals and selected the most interactive and interesting ones to receive funding. We did not require slides, exhibit
histories, art degrees or references — all we asked for was a great idea and the ability to carry it out. I had to unlearn years of art world snobbishness as I witnessed people who had never made art come up with really interesting projects.
Much of our grant program was based on trust — shocking! And it worked: In my 10 years running the honorariums, only one project failed to get made.
Something I became convinced of during my 10 years of running the art grant program was that collaboration is a much more natural and rewarding path than competition. The Burning Man artists didn’t compete with or try to best each other, they helped each other! They loaned tools and materials, worked on each other’s installations, and generally supported one another. Everyone benefited and thrived. The institutional art world could learn a lot from Burning Man.
In my current role as the archivist and art collection curator for Burning Man, I manage eight archives and I select and hang art and photographs at our San Francisco office. One of the archives I manage is Material Culture — objects made to be gifted on the playa. As a maker of jewelry, I have a special interest in the pendants, pins and earrings people made (most with Burning Man references) to give away, and have amassed a large collection of these.
Years ago, Karen Christians, a fellow jeweler who ran jewelry-making workshops at Burning Man, suggested that we do a book on this jewelry.
Jewelry of Burning Man, which we produced with photographer George Post, was published in 2015, and featured my 20-year collection. This led to me curating a show of playa jewelry for the Fuller Craft Museum near Boston, which then traveled to the Bellevue Museum in Seattle.
I also do some independent curating. The most recent show I worked on was Reimagine: The Art of Sustainable Thinking at the Randall Museum in San Francisco. The show was a collaboration between SCRAP and the Randall Museum, two long-standing Bay Area community nonprofits that champion art, the environment and education as core values of their missions. The show focused on 2D and 3D work made from recycled items, and included several Burning
Man artists.
I continue to make jewelry and also headpieces. Years of costuming at Burning Man inspired the creation of extravagant and sometimes amusing hats, crowns and elaborate headdresses, some influenced by my travels.
As a maker of objects, I’ve always been fascinated by what others make, and have been collecting such items all my life. Every object I have has a story and represents a friendship, a trip, a gift or a specific life experience. Many of my objects were collected during my travels, and others from visits to flea markets, estate sales and thrift shops. I’m also lucky to be gifted various items from friends, some of whom are artists, who know of my love of handmade objects. I surround myself with these treasures and am always adding more — it still thrills me to come across an unusual object.
My collections include Maasai beadwork, many types of jewelry, American outsider art, Jamaican intuitive art, prison art made from cigarette packs, contemporary American art, African recycled tin craft, plus art, jewelry and photographs from Burning Man, vintage and ethnic clothing, hats and headpieces, African printed cotton and weavings, carved wooden animals, and Jamaican cootuhs (turtle decoys).
I also collect natural items, having great respect and love for nature. As clever as we humans are, we cannot make a seashell, a bone, a skull or an insect. I adore these beautiful objects and do not buy them; to me, it’s all about the experience of finding a treasure in nature and remembering the place and the situation. Sometimes restoration is required, especially with skulls, and sometimes I’m gifted these things by friends.
My home is a much-loved refuge from the crazy world we’re currently living in; when my faith in humanity sinks, I find comfort and solace here, as well as in my garden. My collections remind me of the interesting people I’ve met all over the world, and of my experiences with them. And of course, my beloved cats are a constant source of amusement and joy. My clowder consists of two females, PoPo and Prunie, and Mister Pickles, the newest addition. I love having three cats — they’re like their own little ethnic group within our household. As they say: Dogs have owners; cats have staff. I always joke that, technically, I’m not a crazy cat lady — because I’m married! But I wonder…
Visitors to my home in Potrero Hill, San Francisco, often refer to my flat as a museum, which used to annoy me, as everything is here to be picked up, touched and examined, not protected behind glass. I’ve gradually come to realize that there may well be an eccentric little museum in my future. My husband, Beto, and I have been looking for property in western Petaluma, where we hope to find something with an outbuilding and a little acreage. We’ve spent our lives in urban settings, and now look forward to rural splendor, close to the ocean.
America is awash in small, unusual museums, and I hope to create one where all of my collections can be preserved and available to the public.
♦♦♦
From Lori Siebert |I have a cousin who attended Burning Man for several years and it always fascinated me. Learning about the incredible life journey of LadyBee (Christine) was equally enthralling. Wow, what an incredibly adventurous life she has lived! And, it has made its way into her artistically curated home. I love the way she displays the treasures gathered from her interesting travels. There is a story behind every object. I love a home that is also a work of art.
PHOTO BY BETO GONSALVES
As a child, I loved to paint and draw, and by the time I finished high school I had decided to devote myself to the making of art. I had lovely parents who encouraged me to pursue all of my interests, although being an artist wasn’t at the top of their list. Like many parents in the 1960s, they wanted me to learn a skill for which I’d earn a good living. And, like all parents during that turbulent decade, they were appalled when I headed down the hippie path — although I was a bit young, observing it all from my suburban Chicago high school. I devoted myself to the art studio, where I remained each day after school, and enjoyed the photography classes as well.
In the space of a few years, everything seemed to change: Suddenly, there was feminism, gay liberation, civil rights, free love, cannabis, psychedelics and, of course, the music. I’m grateful to have come of age during that time and I feel a special bond with my age mates; many of us were freed from conventional expectations and pursued lives outside the mainstream.
When I went to the University of Illinois, my world expanded considerably. In my suburban high school in the late 60s, there were very few Black students; but suddenly, I was surrounded by people of all ethnicities and persuasions, and I embraced the diversity. After getting a BFA, I moved to Chicago and completed an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, fully intending to pursue a gallery career.
Another great love of mine is travel and after I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1973, I set out on the “hippie trail” to India, hitchhiking from Paris to Afghanistan, where it became so hot that I turned around and went down to the Greek Islands and Morocco. In Marrakech, I visited an American friend who had joined the Peace Corps and was enamored of her life and work there. I knew that at some point I’d be signing up.
After grad school, instead of focusing on my art career, I joined the Peace Corps, specifically to go to West Africa. I’d been learning African dance during college and grad school and was fascinated by the Ghanaian instructors.
I was sent to Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom in South Africa, where I taught art in a rural secondary school. There, I had to adapt to rural life, after living in Chicago my whole life. I learned to pitch a tent, start a fire, and ride horses. Lesotho is not tropical, and the seasons are distinct, with extremely cold winters. Local crafts were not abundant, as survival was difficult. Soil erosion didn’t support healthy crops; and 60 percent of the men were working in the mines of South Africa.
As I was deeply interested in African culture and crafts, I asked to be transferred to West Africa, but no suitable programs were found. So I bought a ticket to Lagos, Nigeria, and began a year of hitchhiking across West Africa — from Nigeria to Togo, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Senegal.
A really valuable lesson I learned in West African villages is the importance of acknowledging other people; one didn’t ever pass another person without greeting them. To this day, I say hello to every person I pass on the street. Most folks are pleased and respond, but some simply look at me as if I’m crazy. I also speak with every cashier I meet in stores and anyone I encounter in public service jobs; it’s so important to recognize the humanity of these folks who have to do the same repetitive actions all day long. Please make contact with them!
When I returned to the U.S., I was not thrilled to be back in the Western world and signed up for the Peace Corps again. Meanwhile, I had met a group called Art Safari in Nigeria, and they asked me to lead a group of craftspeople to Ghana and Nigeria, so I was able to return there for a summer.
Then I was sent to Peace Corps Jamaica in 1979 to work at the Kingston School of Art. Having spent years in art school, I wanted a more authentic, rural experience, so I was sent to Runaway Bay, on the north coast, to help a group of wood-carvers develop a craft market at a fishing beach.
I loved working with them, and I go back often to visit. My life there was so healthy and active. I rode a bike, ran and swam in the ocean daily, and had a very healthy diet of fresh produce and seafood. For a tiny island, Jamaica is so rich in culture — the music, literature, theater, intuitive art and dance are prolific.
In 1982 I moved back to Chicago, where I focused on mixed media drawings. Eventually, I felt the urge to move to New York City, the great proving ground for artists. In Chicago, I was surrounded by an intimate community of peers, but when I moved to New York I became one of thousands of painters and sculptors all struggling to get their work seen in an intensely competitive environment.
I spent a lot of time, like everyone else, going to openings, dropping off slides at galleries and trying to meet critics, dealers and curators. All of this was like a second job, on top of making the art. It seemed as if the artists were making art for the other players in the art world, who had inside information on the nature of that work. For the general public, who didn’t have this special information, the work was confusing and out of reach.
I began to question the value system around me, which was ultimately exclusionary, market-driven and isolating. As I became more alienated from the world I had chosen to live in, I was no longer quite sure why I was making art anymore, and I stopped altogether. I still had the need to make things, however, and turned to jewelry.
My dear friend Robert had been going to Providence, Rhode Island, to Wolf E. Myrow, the motherlode of vintage jewelry findings and materials, and he convinced me to join him on one of his visits. I began making jewelry from vintage findings — notably Bakelite and brass stampings — and I loved making big, elaborate pins and necklaces.
In 1987, I spent a summer in Kenya as a leader for Crossroads Africa, a two-month program for university students who do community development work. Nearly all of the leaders are former Peace Corps volunteers. We lived in a Maasai village, Kajiado, where we built a school building. During this time, I collected traditional Maasai beadwork jewelry that had been used in traditional ceremonies and embedded with red laterite soil, unlike the jewelry made for tourists. After completing the schoolhouse, the students returned home and I traveled up to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
Later, as I approached 40, I found myself growing tired of the concrete jungle and wanting to be closer to nature. What American city had equal doses of culture and nature? San Francisco came to mind and, in 1991, I left New York and moved there. I started a small jewelry business, but was disappointed to see that my bigger, wilder pieces were not as marketable as smaller, more conventional ones. I had to tone down my work, and I didn’t find making multiples very fulfilling — I much preferred making one-of-a-kind pieces.
In August of 1995, on a whim, I drove to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada with a girlfriend, with only a vague idea of what I was journeying toward, having seen Burning Man in a list of summer festivals in the Bay Guardian. I was dazzled by the setting and the event, thrilled
to be part of the creativity, energy and goodwill of the community, and delighted that I had stumbled upon something I knew would change my life.
I found a group of people who were alienated, not only from the art world but from mainstream culture in general, and were doing something about it. Out on the playa, they were creating their own culture, which seemed to be based on humor, play, imagination, sharing, cooperation and personal responsibility. I felt I’d somehow come home, and I proceeded to become deeply involved in the community back in San Francisco as well as on the playa.
There wasn’t much art on the playa in 1995, but as more artists created bigger and more complex installations each year, it occurred to me that a new kind of art-making was evolving, completely outside of the mainstream art world. On the playa, artists weren’t attached to sole ownership of the work, which was community-based and communally built. Groups of artists and friends worked together on projects, sharing resources and collaborating instead of competing.
Most amazing was the sense that these artists were so far removed from notions of preciosity and market value that they were actually burning their work at the end of the event. They weren’t trying to attract a dealer or a collector; they weren’t trying to get into a gallery, nor were they looking for the attention of a critic. And they weren’t doing it solely for themselves — they were doing it for the experience and for the community.
In 1998, I was asked to help produce the first art exhibit about Burning Man at the San Francisco Art Commission Galleries. The purpose of the exhibit was not to sell art, but to show those who weren’t able to get out to the playa what was happening out there.
After working with these artists, I realized that I was much better suited to curating than making art. After the isolation of working alone in the studio and the struggle to survive in New York, I was very happy to be involved with a group of artists who were working together in this unique community.
For the first time, I felt connected to something much bigger than myself, having found a nascent art world I could believe in and to which I could apply my skills in a way that felt positive and oriented toward a new vision of art-making that wasn’t driven by commerce and marketing but by the collective joy of creating together.
In 1999, I was hired to be the Burning Man art curator, specifically to run the brand-new art grant program. Larry Harvey, its founder, and I reviewed proposals and selected the most interactive and interesting ones to receive funding. We did not require slides, exhibit
histories, art degrees or references — all we asked for was a great idea and the ability to carry it out. I had to unlearn years of art world snobbishness as I witnessed people who had never made art come up with really interesting projects.
Much of our grant program was based on trust — shocking! And it worked: In my 10 years running the honorariums, only one project failed to get made.
Something I became convinced of during my 10 years of running the art grant program was that collaboration is a much more natural and rewarding path than competition. The Burning Man artists didn’t compete with or try to best each other, they helped each other! They loaned tools and materials, worked on each other’s installations, and generally supported one another. Everyone benefited and thrived. The institutional art world could learn a lot from Burning Man.
In my current role as the archivist and art collection curator for Burning Man, I manage eight archives and I select and hang art and photographs at our San Francisco office. One of the archives I manage is Material Culture — objects made to be gifted on the playa. As a maker of jewelry, I have a special interest in the pendants, pins and earrings people made (most with Burning Man references) to give away, and have amassed a large collection of these.
Years ago, Karen Christians, a fellow jeweler who ran jewelry-making workshops at Burning Man, suggested that we do a book on this jewelry.
Jewelry of Burning Man, which we produced with photographer George Post, was published in 2015, and featured my 20-year collection. This led to me curating a show of playa jewelry for the Fuller Craft Museum near Boston, which then traveled to the Bellevue Museum in Seattle.
I also do some independent curating. The most recent show I worked on was Reimagine: The Art of Sustainable Thinking at the Randall Museum in San Francisco. The show was a collaboration between SCRAP and the Randall Museum, two long-standing Bay Area community nonprofits that champion art, the environment and education as core values of their missions. The show focused on 2D and 3D work made from recycled items, and included several Burning
Man artists.
I continue to make jewelry and also headpieces. Years of costuming at Burning Man inspired the creation of extravagant and sometimes amusing hats, crowns and elaborate headdresses, some influenced by my travels.
As a maker of objects, I’ve always been fascinated by what others make, and have been collecting such items all my life. Every object I have has a story and represents a friendship, a trip, a gift or a specific life experience. Many of my objects were collected during my travels, and others from visits to flea markets, estate sales and thrift shops. I’m also lucky to be gifted various items from friends, some of whom are artists, who know of my love of handmade objects. I surround myself with these treasures and am always adding more — it still thrills me to come across an unusual object.
My collections include Maasai beadwork, many types of jewelry, American outsider art, Jamaican intuitive art, prison art made from cigarette packs, contemporary American art, African recycled tin craft, plus art, jewelry and photographs from Burning Man, vintage and ethnic clothing, hats and headpieces, African printed cotton and weavings, carved wooden animals, and Jamaican cootuhs (turtle decoys).
I also collect natural items, having great respect and love for nature. As clever as we humans are, we cannot make a seashell, a bone, a skull or an insect. I adore these beautiful objects and do not buy them; to me, it’s all about the experience of finding a treasure in nature and remembering the place and the situation. Sometimes restoration is required, especially with skulls, and sometimes I’m gifted these things by friends.
My home is a much-loved refuge from the crazy world we’re currently living in; when my faith in humanity sinks, I find comfort and solace here, as well as in my garden. My collections remind me of the interesting people I’ve met all over the world, and of my experiences with them. And of course, my beloved cats are a constant source of amusement and joy. My clowder consists of two females, PoPo and Prunie, and Mister Pickles, the newest addition. I love having three cats — they’re like their own little ethnic group within our household. As they say: Dogs have owners; cats have staff. I always joke that, technically, I’m not a crazy cat lady — because I’m married! But I wonder…
Visitors to my home in Potrero Hill, San Francisco, often refer to my flat as a museum, which used to annoy me, as everything is here to be picked up, touched and examined, not protected behind glass. I’ve gradually come to realize that there may well be an eccentric little museum in my future. My husband, Beto, and I have been looking for property in western Petaluma, where we hope to find something with an outbuilding and a little acreage. We’ve spent our lives in urban settings, and now look forward to rural splendor, close to the ocean.
America is awash in small, unusual museums, and I hope to create one where all of my collections can be preserved and available to the public.
♦♦♦
From Lori Siebert |I have a cousin who attended Burning Man for several years and it always fascinated me. Learning about the incredible life journey of LadyBee (Christine) was equally enthralling. Wow, what an incredibly adventurous life she has lived! And, it has made its way into her artistically curated home. I love the way she displays the treasures gathered from her interesting travels. There is a story behind every object. I love a home that is also a work of art.
Related Stories
PHOTO BY BETO GONSALVES
As a child, I loved to paint and draw, and by the time I finished high school I had decided to devote myself to the making of art. I had lovely parents who encouraged me to pursue all of my interests, although being an artist wasn’t at the top of their list. Like many parents in the 1960s, they wanted me to learn a skill for which I’d earn a good living. And, like all parents during that turbulent decade, they were appalled when I headed down the hippie path — although I was a bit young, observing it all from my suburban Chicago high school. I devoted myself to the art studio, where I remained each day after school, and enjoyed the photography classes as well.
In the space of a few years, everything seemed to change: Suddenly, there was feminism, gay liberation, civil rights, free love, cannabis, psychedelics and, of course, the music. I’m grateful to have come of age during that time and I feel a special bond with my age mates; many of us were freed from conventional expectations and pursued lives outside the mainstream.
When I went to the University of Illinois, my world expanded considerably. In my suburban high school in the late 60s, there were very few Black students; but suddenly, I was surrounded by people of all ethnicities and persuasions, and I embraced the diversity. After getting a BFA, I moved to Chicago and completed an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, fully intending to pursue a gallery career.
Another great love of mine is travel and after I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1973, I set out on the “hippie trail” to India, hitchhiking from Paris to Afghanistan, where it became so hot that I turned around and went down to the Greek Islands and Morocco. In Marrakech, I visited an American friend who had joined the Peace Corps and was enamored of her life and work there. I knew that at some point I’d be signing up.
After grad school, instead of focusing on my art career, I joined the Peace Corps, specifically to go to West Africa. I’d been learning African dance during college and grad school and was fascinated by the Ghanaian instructors.
I was sent to Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom in South Africa, where I taught art in a rural secondary school. There, I had to adapt to rural life, after living in Chicago my whole life. I learned to pitch a tent, start a fire, and ride horses. Lesotho is not tropical, and the seasons are distinct, with extremely cold winters. Local crafts were not abundant, as survival was difficult. Soil erosion didn’t support healthy crops; and 60 percent of the men were working in the mines of South Africa.
As I was deeply interested in African culture and crafts, I asked to be transferred to West Africa, but no suitable programs were found. So I bought a ticket to Lagos, Nigeria, and began a year of hitchhiking across West Africa — from Nigeria to Togo, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Senegal.
A really valuable lesson I learned in West African villages is the importance of acknowledging other people; one didn’t ever pass another person without greeting them. To this day, I say hello to every person I pass on the street. Most folks are pleased and respond, but some simply look at me as if I’m crazy. I also speak with every cashier I meet in stores and anyone I encounter in public service jobs; it’s so important to recognize the humanity of these folks who have to do the same repetitive actions all day long. Please make contact with them!
When I returned to the U.S., I was not thrilled to be back in the Western world and signed up for the Peace Corps again. Meanwhile, I had met a group called Art Safari in Nigeria, and they asked me to lead a group of craftspeople to Ghana and Nigeria, so I was able to return there for a summer.
Then I was sent to Peace Corps Jamaica in 1979 to work at the Kingston School of Art. Having spent years in art school, I wanted a more authentic, rural experience, so I was sent to Runaway Bay, on the north coast, to help a group of wood-carvers develop a craft market at a fishing beach.
I loved working with them, and I go back often to visit. My life there was so healthy and active. I rode a bike, ran and swam in the ocean daily, and had a very healthy diet of fresh produce and seafood. For a tiny island, Jamaica is so rich in culture — the music, literature, theater, intuitive art and dance are prolific.
In 1982 I moved back to Chicago, where I focused on mixed media drawings. Eventually, I felt the urge to move to New York City, the great proving ground for artists. In Chicago, I was surrounded by an intimate community of peers, but when I moved to New York I became one of thousands of painters and sculptors all struggling to get their work seen in an intensely competitive environment.
I spent a lot of time, like everyone else, going to openings, dropping off slides at galleries and trying to meet critics, dealers and curators. All of this was like a second job, on top of making the art. It seemed as if the artists were making art for the other players in the art world, who had inside information on the nature of that work. For the general public, who didn’t have this special information, the work was confusing and out of reach.
I began to question the value system around me, which was ultimately exclusionary, market-driven and isolating. As I became more alienated from the world I had chosen to live in, I was no longer quite sure why I was making art anymore, and I stopped altogether. I still had the need to make things, however, and turned to jewelry.
My dear friend Robert had been going to Providence, Rhode Island, to Wolf E. Myrow, the motherlode of vintage jewelry findings and materials, and he convinced me to join him on one of his visits. I began making jewelry from vintage findings — notably Bakelite and brass stampings — and I loved making big, elaborate pins and necklaces.
In 1987, I spent a summer in Kenya as a leader for Crossroads Africa, a two-month program for university students who do community development work. Nearly all of the leaders are former Peace Corps volunteers. We lived in a Maasai village, Kajiado, where we built a school building. During this time, I collected traditional Maasai beadwork jewelry that had been used in traditional ceremonies and embedded with red laterite soil, unlike the jewelry made for tourists. After completing the schoolhouse, the students returned home and I traveled up to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
Later, as I approached 40, I found myself growing tired of the concrete jungle and wanting to be closer to nature. What American city had equal doses of culture and nature? San Francisco came to mind and, in 1991, I left New York and moved there. I started a small jewelry business, but was disappointed to see that my bigger, wilder pieces were not as marketable as smaller, more conventional ones. I had to tone down my work, and I didn’t find making multiples very fulfilling — I much preferred making one-of-a-kind pieces.
In August of 1995, on a whim, I drove to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada with a girlfriend, with only a vague idea of what I was journeying toward, having seen Burning Man in a list of summer festivals in the Bay Guardian. I was dazzled by the setting and the event, thrilled
to be part of the creativity, energy and goodwill of the community, and delighted that I had stumbled upon something I knew would change my life.
I found a group of people who were alienated, not only from the art world but from mainstream culture in general, and were doing something about it. Out on the playa, they were creating their own culture, which seemed to be based on humor, play, imagination, sharing, cooperation and personal responsibility. I felt I’d somehow come home, and I proceeded to become deeply involved in the community back in San Francisco as well as on the playa.
There wasn’t much art on the playa in 1995, but as more artists created bigger and more complex installations each year, it occurred to me that a new kind of art-making was evolving, completely outside of the mainstream art world. On the playa, artists weren’t attached to sole ownership of the work, which was community-based and communally built. Groups of artists and friends worked together on projects, sharing resources and collaborating instead of competing.
Most amazing was the sense that these artists were so far removed from notions of preciosity and market value that they were actually burning their work at the end of the event. They weren’t trying to attract a dealer or a collector; they weren’t trying to get into a gallery, nor were they looking for the attention of a critic. And they weren’t doing it solely for themselves — they were doing it for the experience and for the community.
In 1998, I was asked to help produce the first art exhibit about Burning Man at the San Francisco Art Commission Galleries. The purpose of the exhibit was not to sell art, but to show those who weren’t able to get out to the playa what was happening out there.
After working with these artists, I realized that I was much better suited to curating than making art. After the isolation of working alone in the studio and the struggle to survive in New York, I was very happy to be involved with a group of artists who were working together in this unique community.
For the first time, I felt connected to something much bigger than myself, having found a nascent art world I could believe in and to which I could apply my skills in a way that felt positive and oriented toward a new vision of art-making that wasn’t driven by commerce and marketing but by the collective joy of creating together.
In 1999, I was hired to be the Burning Man art curator, specifically to run the brand-new art grant program. Larry Harvey, its founder, and I reviewed proposals and selected the most interactive and interesting ones to receive funding. We did not require slides, exhibit
histories, art degrees or references — all we asked for was a great idea and the ability to carry it out. I had to unlearn years of art world snobbishness as I witnessed people who had never made art come up with really interesting projects.
Much of our grant program was based on trust — shocking! And it worked: In my 10 years running the honorariums, only one project failed to get made.
Something I became convinced of during my 10 years of running the art grant program was that collaboration is a much more natural and rewarding path than competition. The Burning Man artists didn’t compete with or try to best each other, they helped each other! They loaned tools and materials, worked on each other’s installations, and generally supported one another. Everyone benefited and thrived. The institutional art world could learn a lot from Burning Man.
In my current role as the archivist and art collection curator for Burning Man, I manage eight archives and I select and hang art and photographs at our San Francisco office. One of the archives I manage is Material Culture — objects made to be gifted on the playa. As a maker of jewelry, I have a special interest in the pendants, pins and earrings people made (most with Burning Man references) to give away, and have amassed a large collection of these.
Years ago, Karen Christians, a fellow jeweler who ran jewelry-making workshops at Burning Man, suggested that we do a book on this jewelry.
Jewelry of Burning Man, which we produced with photographer George Post, was published in 2015, and featured my 20-year collection. This led to me curating a show of playa jewelry for the Fuller Craft Museum near Boston, which then traveled to the Bellevue Museum in Seattle.
I also do some independent curating. The most recent show I worked on was Reimagine: The Art of Sustainable Thinking at the Randall Museum in San Francisco. The show was a collaboration between SCRAP and the Randall Museum, two long-standing Bay Area community nonprofits that champion art, the environment and education as core values of their missions. The show focused on 2D and 3D work made from recycled items, and included several Burning
Man artists.
I continue to make jewelry and also headpieces. Years of costuming at Burning Man inspired the creation of extravagant and sometimes amusing hats, crowns and elaborate headdresses, some influenced by my travels.
As a maker of objects, I’ve always been fascinated by what others make, and have been collecting such items all my life. Every object I have has a story and represents a friendship, a trip, a gift or a specific life experience. Many of my objects were collected during my travels, and others from visits to flea markets, estate sales and thrift shops. I’m also lucky to be gifted various items from friends, some of whom are artists, who know of my love of handmade objects. I surround myself with these treasures and am always adding more — it still thrills me to come across an unusual object.
My collections include Maasai beadwork, many types of jewelry, American outsider art, Jamaican intuitive art, prison art made from cigarette packs, contemporary American art, African recycled tin craft, plus art, jewelry and photographs from Burning Man, vintage and ethnic clothing, hats and headpieces, African printed cotton and weavings, carved wooden animals, and Jamaican cootuhs (turtle decoys).
I also collect natural items, having great respect and love for nature. As clever as we humans are, we cannot make a seashell, a bone, a skull or an insect. I adore these beautiful objects and do not buy them; to me, it’s all about the experience of finding a treasure in nature and remembering the place and the situation. Sometimes restoration is required, especially with skulls, and sometimes I’m gifted these things by friends.
My home is a much-loved refuge from the crazy world we’re currently living in; when my faith in humanity sinks, I find comfort and solace here, as well as in my garden. My collections remind me of the interesting people I’ve met all over the world, and of my experiences with them. And of course, my beloved cats are a constant source of amusement and joy. My clowder consists of two females, PoPo and Prunie, and Mister Pickles, the newest addition. I love having three cats — they’re like their own little ethnic group within our household. As they say: Dogs have owners; cats have staff. I always joke that, technically, I’m not a crazy cat lady — because I’m married! But I wonder…
Visitors to my home in Potrero Hill, San Francisco, often refer to my flat as a museum, which used to annoy me, as everything is here to be picked up, touched and examined, not protected behind glass. I’ve gradually come to realize that there may well be an eccentric little museum in my future. My husband, Beto, and I have been looking for property in western Petaluma, where we hope to find something with an outbuilding and a little acreage. We’ve spent our lives in urban settings, and now look forward to rural splendor, close to the ocean.
America is awash in small, unusual museums, and I hope to create one where all of my collections can be preserved and available to the public.
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From Lori Siebert |I have a cousin who attended Burning Man for several years and it always fascinated me. Learning about the incredible life journey of LadyBee (Christine) was equally enthralling. Wow, what an incredibly adventurous life she has lived! And, it has made its way into her artistically curated home. I love the way she displays the treasures gathered from her interesting travels. There is a story behind every object. I love a home that is also a work of art.
The Women Create Foundation is a catalyst for small but significant strides to empower women creators through grants that help bring projects to life and foster innovation.
