Frostburn: Art, Community, and the Elements

After Pittsburgh got pummeled hardcore by Mother Nature, most of us decided the logical thing to do was to hibernate in our living rooms, cut off from society. But to others, coming together to fight her back was more appealing. So they went camping.

These people are the participants of Frostburn, the annual extreme camping adventure/art exposition that took place last weekend at Cooper’s Lake in Slippery Rock.

If the concept seems familiar, it’s because it’s based off of Burning Man, an experimental artistic gathering in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada that has exploded in popularity in the past decade. For a week every August, Burners shed societal fears of judgment and express themselves artistically to work together to build a community, all while trying not to have a heat stroke in 100+ degree weather.

When some Pittsburgh Burner alums wanted to bring this back to our city, they realized that what the ‘Burgh lacks in extreme heat, we make up for in cold. (And this year was obviously no exception.)

So they organized Frostburn, which, like Burning Man, is based on ten principles: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-Reliance, Radical Self-Expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation and Immediacy. In short, it’s a spiritual experience. It’s a party. It’s an empowering community. It’s a blank canvas and a tub of paint and a creative mind. It’s everything the normal 9-5 grind is not.

Because of this, no one at Frostburn can just sit around and watch. Whether or not you consider yourself an artist, the concept is to create, create, create. Since it is the dead of winter, participants are encouraged to design art around the theme “Share the Warmth,” and most of the works are interactive. A past example is a “fire-driven version of the electronic game ‘Simon.’” (Fellow children of the 90s, rejoice.) They also organize theme camps, which are described in the Post Gazette by co-organizer Kimmy Belora as follows:

"People create different spaces to keep warm. One of the great ones was a sweat lodge, which got up to 120-degrees," she said. "Another fun one is the Bubble Dome. It was like an igloo covered in bubble wrap and crazy colored lights where we hosted tea parties."

I know that this is obviously something you can’t understand until you do it (that’s the first thing Burning Man’s website says in its “About” section), so me attempting to talk about it is laughable. But I just couldn't resist. After reading this essay and various websites, I’m super interested in this complex event, and the fact that there's a version based in our fair city makes it all the better.

I mean, the ten principles are radical in themselves, but add the weather? It brings a new definition to “roughing it.” I went to Bonnaroo in 2008 and thought that I was being tough, what with not showering for four days and sweating in the Tennessee sun. And Bonnaroo felt far more creative and less commercial than real life, even though evidence of capitalism was definitely all around me (hello Fuse TV cameras and Garnier Fructis hair salon)--but I just didn’t pay attention to it. Instead I let the constraints and worries of day-to-day life slip off me as I fell into the tunes of My Morning Jacket and Mason Jennings.

But man, after learning about Frostburn, Bonnaroo was straight-up pre-school.

If you want to see some pictures of drunken revelers and awesome sculptures at past Frostburns, click here. Like me, be jealous, awestruck, and a bit intimidated.