Thursday, January 01, 2009

Burn, baby, burn: Flaming timepiece incinerates last year's regrets

Yesterday afternoon Kathy and I went downtown to walk around Town Lake and see the preparations for Austin's First Night celebrations, and I couldn't help but remark here about the astonishing New Year's art project the city of Austin financed for the event.

The city gave artsts a grant to construct an ornate, two-story working wooden clock - a project that took them three months - then for the new year, they invited the public to write on the clock anything they'd like to symbolically get rid of and burned it publicly last night!

I'm pleased and proud to live in a city that spent my tax dollars that way, and clearly from the response we saw to this magnificent piece of art, the public enjoyed it, too. Here's the Statesman's coverage, a Youtube video of the clock once it was fully constructed and here's a clip of them burning it last night - awesome stuff.

Congrats, and thanks, to everyone involved with the project.