Yukiko Chavez creates an art piece at the Lightning in a Bottle festival at the Lake Skinner Recreation Area in Winchester on Saturday, July 13, 2013. (Vanessa Franko/Staff Photo)
Yukiko Chavez crouched under a canopy, adding pieces to a foam core tree she sculpted as part of her interactive art experience that will become a piece she is calling the “Lightning in a Bottle Tree” at the Lightning in the Bottle Festival at the Lake Skinner Recreation Area in Winchester on Saturday, July 13.
The San Diego artist attended the event twice before this year, just as a festivalgoer. A conversation with a presenter at last year’s fest inspired her to create art again.
“I’ve never done any live sculpting, ever,” she said.
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Chavez said she followed Lightning in a Bottle artist Shrine on Facebook and saw he was doing a workshop in Los Angeles. She attended, and helped paint his piece that was shown at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and made a reprise at the Temple of Consciousness at Lightning in a Bottle.
For her creation, the idea fell into place and on her hour long commute each day, when she took advantage of the time to brainstorm. She had the idea that everyone would collaborate and mosaic pieces onto the found art.
“Everybody is going to mosaic those pieces,” she said.
People passed by and added items throughout the weekend. The highest point on a tree is a peanut added by a woman who was carrying a bag of them.
A child took some pieces Chavez had lying around the space to the creation station and glues them and hung them atop the highest branches.
As her seeds of creativity sprouted at Lightning in a Bottle, her interactive sculpture allows others to create, too.
“I’m paying it forward,” Chavez said.
The tree has a hole in the middle, ready for Chavez to put her last piece at the end of the festival, a lightning bolt in a bottle she wore around her neck, made from an empty nail polish bottle and a lightning bolt cut out of the metal that came from a tealight.