The Gingerbread Man – June 2004

My name is Chuck of Arabia. I build large wooden sculptures in the desert for fun, and burn them to entertain my friends.

This is the story of my 2004 burnable art project, The Gingerbread Man.

DESIGN

In March of 2004, I was informed that the theme for Utahburn’s June festival (SynOrgy) would be Candy Land.

Candy Land is a board game for children 3 to 6 years old. Each child chooses a Gingerbread Man game piece as their personal avatar in the adventure. It was thus decided that the centerpiece for SynOrgy should be a burnable Gingerbread Man. And since I had built the effigy for 2003, I was nominated to design and build the Gingerbread Man. I was delighted!

My first step was to do a little research. I borrowed a friend’s game, and photographed the Gingerbread Man game piece. I discovered that the detail was easily lost in an ordinary front-lit photo. So I tried back-lighting it, with much better results.

The next step was to derive original artwork for the game piece. I used some Photoshop magic to create an accurate rendition of our little friend. I made him a bit taller, but otherwise stayed true to the game piece.

I decided it would be fun to make the effigy a lot bigger than the one I built in 2003. The White Rabbit had been 25’-tall, but really the top 6’ were just cosmetic bunny ears. The top of the head was only 19’ above the ground. In contrast, the Gingerbread Man would be 30’ tall.

I wanted to use the same basic construction idea. The fuel would be scrap pallets, arranged in a chimney shape. We’d start by building a rectangular frame of heavy lumber. Then we’d hang pallets from the frame. The face of the Gingerbread Man would be a thin veneer of masonite, cut out and painted according to the Photoshop artwork I’d created.

Here’s the construction drawing I made, showing the various layers. The black outline is the cookie cutout. The green shows the 4x8 masonite sheets that make up the façade. The brown shows the lumber for the tower, and supports for the façade.

CONSTRUCTION

One of the constraints of the construction phase was that we didn’t have a big truck. All of the parts had to fit in my Toyota van for transport to the construction site at Bonneville Seabase in Grantsville.

The pillars for the tower were new lumber. They needed to be 32’ long (of which 4’ would be buried in a post hole), with a 4x4 cross-section. I decided to build them on-site, from 8’-long 2x4s, which would fit in my van.

Here’s M2, assembling a 32’ pillar from eight 2x4s and a pile of screws.

It didn’t take long to complete the pillars and move them to the burn site.

Meanwhile, Larry and Dave dug five holes in the playa with a post-hole digger. The first two feet were sand. Below that was a gloppy clay layer.

Four of the holes were for the pillars that would support the tower. The fifth hole was for a “crane”, which you can see below. The crane was 20’ tall, and light enough that we could up-end it into the central hole by brute force. It had a pulley and rope attached to the top end. We attached the end of the rope to the middle of a 32’ pillar, hoisted it up 16’, and swung the bottom end into a hole.

Each pillar had two strings attached to the top, so we could maneuver it into an exactly vertical position with help from a spirit level.

When all four pillars were upright, we made sure they were vertical and started attaching 2x8 horizontal braces.

The lumber for the braces came from Jason at TRASA, a local artists’ co-op. He’d disassembled an old burnt-out warehouse on the property, and had a huge stack of recovered lumber. Most of it was useless, but we managed to find a substantial number of pieces that were still strong. Jason cut them into 4’ and 8’ sections, and I loaded them into my van and drove off.

We attached horizontal braces all the way up to the top of the tower. Now we had convenient “ladder rungs” on each side to get up and down. As we worked our way up, we laid temporary pallet floors to stand on.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to add the guy wires to support the tower in high winds. Sure enough, that week we got a 50mph windstorm. It flattened the tower.

Flustered but undaunted, we redoubled our efforts. The following weekend, we disassembled the wreckage, salvaged most of the lumber, replaced the pillars, and re-erected the tower. We even got the guy wires up this time.

During the next week, we added angled cross-bracing to stiffen the tower. Then we started adding pallets.

We eventually hung about 140 pallets on the tower.

We left the front face pallet-free. We needed a flat surface to attach the façade to.

We used masonite for the façade, because it was cheap and it was already gingerbread-brown. We broke up the Gingerbread Man artwork into 4’ x 8’ rectangles, and printed each one on a graph paper grid. Then, using masonite rulers, we transferred the pattern to the masonite sheets.

Here’s John helping me lay out the façade.

After marking a suitable number of points along each curved contour, we connected the dots, using a bent strip of masonite as a French curve.

Some of the lines were paint lines. Others were cut lines.

We used a saber-saw to cut along the cut lines.

Then we used a 4” roller to paint along the paint lines.

Meanwhile, out at the construction site, another windstorm was brewing. This time, the peak winds got up to 75mph, according to the Grantsville Airport weather station. But the tower stayed up!

There was some minor damage. The next weekend, we went out to repair it. A come-along got the bent pillar back into place. Some new bracing and a lot more screws secured it.

The façade had a huge surface area, and the fragile 1/16” masonite was very susceptible to wind damage. So we didn’t start putting the façade on the tower until Friday morning, the day the festival started.

Fortunately, the façade went up with very few problems.

We finished putting the façade in place at about 3pm, just in time for the official opening of the festival.

A lot of people told me they could see the Gingerbread Man from a mile away. It was the first thing they saw from the road that told them they were home!

We had a gorgeous sunset that evening. The cookie was serenely beautiful. Everyone who helped build it had good reason to feel a proud sense of accomplishment.

The next day, Saturday, was Burn Day. I donned my Cookie Chef outfit.

John and I spent part of the afternoon installing the ignitor. It was an inverted pyramid of wood bits. At the bottom were toothpicks. At the top were 1” sticks. The idea was that a single match would light the toothpicks, which would light the tinder above, and eventually produce a fire big and hot enough to ignite the Gingerbread Man.

To help it along, we nailed dozens of accelerant strips into the interior of the tower. They were made of burlap soaked in melted paraffin. Though highly flammable, they could be left in place indefinitely if we needed to delay the burn for any reason.

The strips were intended to quickly carry the fire from the ignitor to the sides and top of the tower.

Once the ignitor and the accelerant strips were installed, it was just a matter of waiting for the ignition ceremony to begin.

Despite our careful preparations, I was suffering from pre-burn jitters.

THE BURN

At 11pm on Saturday night, Aspen Moon’s fire troupe, The Incendiary Circus, began their torch-light procession.

They started at the edge of the playa, and stopped in front of the Cookie, to the accompaniment of tribal drums.

Then they spread out and spun fire for fifteen minutes. Their performance was theater as much as fire-spinning.

At the end, Lucy In The Sky came out and danced with her flaming lollipop. She used it to vanquish Evil Lord Licorice, who had been holding Candy Land hostage. Then she disappeared behind the Gingerbread Man. She must have been doing something unspeakable to the poor Cookie, because he soon began to burn.

For a minute, the flames were small and dim. But they rapidly spread, growing larger and brighter. Then flames began to emerge above his head. Suddenly, fireworks went off!

The crowd returned fire. Soon, fireworks were flying everywhere, and the Cookie was burning fiercely!

At the peak, four minutes after ignition, the Cookie supported a column of fire over ninety feet high. It ate away his skin, exposing the crowd to the full heat of the fire.

Gradually, the fire subsided, its fuel of pallets consumed.

Only the skeletonized tower remained.

Soon, even the tower fell, defeated by the raging inferno below, and helped to its grave by participants yanking on the guy wires.

All night long, the bonfire blazed. It warmed the hearts of those who remained to celebrate the brief life and spectacular demise of The Gingerbread Man.

Postscript

The Gingerbread Man didn't just appear by magic. Working behind the scenes for weeks before the event, twenty hardy elves braved the midges and the heat to create a burnable effigy worthy of Candy Land.

The weekend construction parties had a great energy level and a high degree of professionalism. It never felt like a chore. It was more like a party that smoldered during the week and re-ignited each weekend.

I'd like to highlight the technical climbing skills of Doug and Chris, who attached the Gingerbread Man artwork to the tower.

John was my constant companion throughout the construction. He did half the work of creating the Gingerbread Man facade, and worked tirelessly on the tower.

I especially want to thank M2 and Larry. After working their butts off to build the Man, they were prevented by their jobs from attending the burn.

SPECIFICATIONS

The Gingerbread Man

weighed 8000 pounds, of which about 80% was pallets.

was 30' tall and 24' wide at the fingertips.

was entirely supported by thirty 2x4s.

was held together with 30 pounds of screws.

required 700 man-hours of labor to build.

cost about $1000, of which half is re-usable.

was constructed in the form of a 10' x 6' chimney.

was ignited using 8 pounds of paraffin on burlap strips.

survived an estimated 20,000-pound wind load in 75mph winds.

Photo credits: Maggie May Day, Nate, Wanderlust, and ScottMike.