The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
FireFish being built before burning
The 2019 FireFish has to be built before it can be burned.
Last year, Cleveland Heights artist Daniel McNamara designed and assembled the star of the show for the arts festival that aims to spark revitalization in Lorain.
McNamara, the burning coordinator for FireFish, is returning with similar materials for 2019.
But festival-goers should not expect an identical FireFish when the celebration commences in downtown Lorain on Sept. 20 and 21.
“It’s coming along, little-by-little,” McNamara said Sept. 12 at the donated Lorain warehouse space that serves as a temporary studio.
McNamara learned the largescale craft at the Bread and Puppet Theater, a socially conscious troupe based in Glover, Vt.
As a musician, actor and puppeteer, McNamara is a multifaceted artist, said Festival Director Emily Hoag.
“He can do many things that are needed,” Hoag said. “He can
manage the procession, the parade, the music.
“It is a theatrical performance event, so he’s just a multitalented, multifaceted person.”
The materials
The FireFish will not have a formal blueprint.
“I have a sense of what I’m trying to make,” McNamara said. “It’s going to be head, body, tail, but as I’m looking at what materials I’ve gathered, which cardboard I can get, what’s the size of bamboo I’ve ended up with, then I adapt it to that as it evolves.”
The bones of the fish are bamboo, some stalks brown and stiff, some green and flexible, all harvested in northern Ohio.
Its sinews are strips of rubber cut from old bicycle tubes, a material that grips the bamboo quite well, McNamara said.
He collected stacks of recycled cardboard for the FireFish skin.
Papier mache, made of donated construction paper and cornstarch glue, will smooth it out, and more cardboard will make the leaf-shaped scales.
Paint goes on top to finish the fish.
It will be green to reflect the forest motif of the festival theme, based on pyrophytic seeds that germinate only once heated by fire.
In 2018, Festival Director James Levin selected a theme of release partly in response to a political environment that was tense and sometimes negative, Hoag said.
In fall of last year, wildfires burned up parts of the American west, causing devastation — but also new life and rebirth in time, she said.
In its construction phase, the FireFish in a sense resembles the city, Hoag said.
“It’s not exactly where we’re ready to claim we have a great work of art, but we have the vision and we have the potential, and so does Lorain,” she said.
The fish will have a movable jaw for festival-goers to feed written messages about what they would like to see germinate in Lorain.
The fish, about 30 feet in length and assembled in three sections, is sturdy but light enough to be carried in the parade from Broadway to Black River Landing for the ceremonial burning.
“It’s a balance,” McNamara said. “It’s not a house; it doesn’t have to live a long time.
“It’s only got to survive one parade and one burn.”
The procession will lead into an artistic and musical performance at Black River Landing.
The Ohio Burn Unit will provide the pyrotechnics to set the FireFish alight.
McNamara said he does not mind seeing his work go up in smoke.
“I know I’m building it to burn,” he said. “My own disposition is actually rather comfortable with the blatant reminder of the temporary nature of all of our works.
“When I see the fire burning, I feel no sadness or regret. I feel happy. I daresay satisfaction.”