David Best (born 1945) is an internationally renowned American sculptor. He is well known for building immense temples out of recycled wood sheets (discarded from making toys and other punch-outs) for the Burning Man festivals, where they are then burnt to the ground in a spectacle of light and heat.
Best received a master's degree in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he first took classes at the age of six. His commitment to public art seems rooted in 1960s-era idealism. His works — ceramic sculpture, collages and more — have been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art [1], the Oakland Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art and elsewhere.
Best first began collaborating with others, 20 years ago, when he embarked upon a sideline: stripping down vehicles and giving them total sculptural makeovers, using recycled materials and found objects, often retrieved from dumps and dumpsters. Since then, he has created sculptures from the skeletons of 36 cars and two buses, and worked with more than 10,000 people.
Best built his first Burning Man Temple in 2000, The Temple of the Mind. In 2001, Burning Man helped fund the Temple projects and David, along with Jack Haye who was also responsible for the construction of the Temple of the Mind, built the much larger Temple of Tears. 2001 marked the beginning of a new and profound ritual for the tens of thousands of participants who attend Burning Man each year. After days of writing prayers on the structures, of affixing offerings from one’s life such as pictures, paintings, etc., or of leaving the ashes of loved ones, etc. the Temple is burned on Sunday night. In 2002 the community was blessed with the Temple of Joy. In 2003, David took a departure from the wood temples and gave us the ornate paper Temple of Honor. In 2004 the Temple of Stars was a quarter mile long and almost 120’ high. David took a break in 2005 and 2006 to work on personal projects, including the Hayes Green Temple in San Francisco. Returning in 2007, David, Tim Dawson and the temple crew built the Temple of Forgiveness. David Best's last temple was in 2007 But this doesn’t mean that the Playa has seen the last of Best’s temples. Best originally promised to create one more temple in 2010 or 2011, however the 2010 Temple of Flux and the proposed 2011 Temples have been or will be designed and built by other artists. Best recently confirmed that he will be designing an as yet unnamed temple for 2012 with the theme of "insane mothers".
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