NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) – Weeks of hard work are about to go up in flames! You can watch a huge wookiee statue burn! It’s all part of IGNITION Festival benefiting the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus.
“IGNITION Festival is three days of interactive art, camping, and music at this beautiful hidden urban oasis in New Orleans East,“ Ryan Ballard, with the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus.
The Wookiee is made to look like Chewbacchus the krewe’s mascot.
“The arms are going to go up. The halo is going to light up,” Ballard described. “The eyes will come on fire. Then the whole thing is going to go up.”
The crew upcycled and used burlap sacks to help make the Wookiee’s fur for the art piece. The Wookiee is designed to be three stories tall.
“There is a lot of work that goes into making something this big. The nice thing about the fact that we are going to burn it is we don’t have to pay a lot of attention to the small details,” Brennan Steele, the Wookiee statue’s designer, said. “As long as, it’s strong enough to stand up, we feel safe about it.”
Event organizers plan to burn the art piece on Saturday night.
“It’s going to be an enormous big hot fire. So, this thing is designed to burn like very fast very hot and very safely,” Ballard said. “… It’s all controlled, and there is a bunch of science involved.”
“But most of the people love it,” Eric Arvidson, burn master for the event, stated. “It’s just that primal reaction to fire, right. Everyone has it. They just love to go see a big fire.”
Ballad described what it’s like to watch the wooden piece burn after all the hard work you put in.
He explained, “It feels great. It is wonderful to just watch it like gloriously go up in a pillar of flame and disappear. And, then you don’t have to bring it home and store it.”
The piece was never meant to last forever.
“Things like this you build them once, and you use them for like a big giant crazy festival. And, then you burn it. It goes away, and next year we build something else cool,” Ballard said.
Event Organizers also plan on burning two other wooden art pieces during the festival.
The event starts Thursday. Tickets are required to attend the event. A single day pass is available for Saturday.
For more information on IGNITION Festival click here.
