Fire

Working my way around the Dragon garden, creating elemental representations in the space.  I was mesmerized by the Chihuli Exhibit at the Denver botanical Garden’s last year and have wanted to put up a wall of fire in my garden ever since I saw the one they had in their exhibit.

Chihuly exhibit, Denver Botanical Gardens, 3/2015.

When we built the curved bridges to go over the dry river beds we had a lot of wood left over, and several pieces that were either spear shaped or had a curve in them, due to how the bridge was laid out.  I asked Brian to trim them up in curvy, flame-like shapes.  He did a great job.  they sat around in buckets out behind the house for a year, till I got around to doing this project as one of our community work days.

Curvy cut pressure treated wood, for the flames

Before everyone came over Brian and Dug out trenches to delineate the space, laid out the weed barrier and then held it down with the pressure treated 2x6x10’s.

Trenching out the edge of the fire installation bed

 

 

Laying out and pinning down the weed barrier fabric

We had to hold the wood down in a vice to drill the 3/8″ holes into the wood, then we took them outside and had one person stand on them while another person pounded in the 3/8″ rebar.  This was really hard to do!  When they were done, they were taken to the fire display area and placed into the ground through the fabric.

Pushing in the wood flames, and painting them
Painting

 

 

 

 

 

I placed the longest flames first and then the medium and then the shortest.

In charge of cutting the fabric and pushing in the flames. Rebar had to be pounded into the ground first to make a hole.
Wellyssa, supervising the painting

 

 

 

 

 

We painted the flames with neon, outdoor paint, they glow in the sun shine.  Darkest colors at the tips and yellow and white at the bottom to symbolize a white/hot heat.

All the flames are in place

Lava rock added

We added 2″ of 2″dia lava rock throughout the flames to finish off the look.  It’s amazing, you can almost feel the flames.  Actually, something to know about lava rock, it holds a LOT of energy, myself and certain others can’t get within 6′ of it without getting dizzy. You can feel the movement of the rock, like a lava flow.

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