Graffiti Temple

Artist David Best is known for his gigantic temple temple, part Brussels lace — was covered with names, installations at Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock drawings, messages, stickers, photographs, and flow-Desert; his latest was 115 feet tall, a quarter mile long, ers as high as the arm could reach. and visited by thousands. The temples — largely made Best builds his structures with a part-volunteer crew, out of scrap and the plywood cutouts left over from a which includes everyone from a master architect to a local toy factory — are intended to be places of solace person paralyzed except for the fingertips. He comes for people of all faiths. They’re also a blank slate for up with a drawing, and then he and his experienced everyone who comes to experience them. Visitors are crew try to turn it into reality. “There are no mistakes,” encouraged to write or draw on exposed surfaces, so says Best. “It’s important to me to empower other that the end result is a stunning collaborative state- people to work with the material.” He has worked with ment of mourning. thousands of volunteers over the years.

Photography by Arwen O’Reilly

This last summer, though, San Francisco Mayor The Hayes Green Temple took 30 people three days Gavin Newsom invited Best to temporarily install a to build. Still, despite the intricacy of the design and temple on Hayes Green in San Francisco, not far from the shapes involved, the process is nothing compliCity Hall and the opera house. While some might cated. According to Best, “It’s real caveman stuff.” consider a plywood temple that actually invites graffiti — Arwen O’Reilly to be a risky bet, Best points out that temporary art allows artists to bypass the red tape usually neces- >>David Best Hayes Green Project: blackrockarts.org/ sary to approve public art. This public work, however, ^{david_best.html} was so well loved that it was up for almost six months, far longer than originally planned. By September, the surprisingly elegant plywood structure — part Thai