As many of you will have no doubt heard, I’m going to be teaching a class in Fire Pit Construction at the Ralph Thronton Community Centre over the summer. Obviously, I’m very excited to be sharing my passion and expertise in Fire Pit Construction with the public.* I want this course—which I am calling Fire in the Whole—to be about more than just flames, I want it to be about art and self-expression. Ultimately, I want to pass on to my students the knowledge and passion for Fire Pits that will allow them to incorporate creative and sometimes flirty, structural themes in their own, uniquely individual Fire Pits.
I will start the semester by introducing my students to some elementary Fire Pit Construction techniques such as starting fires in garbage cans and in dumpsters. With the aid of some local experts—T-Wolf and his lady Glitter—we will go on field trips where we apply some of the techniques we’ve learned throughout the neighbourhood.
(The above location could make for an excellent site for a Fire Pit!)
After these basics have been mastered, we will explore utilizing found objects into the design of our fire pits. For instance, a bicycle or a shopping cart could be used as part of the pit’s retaining wall, and your neigbhour’s mail might make for excellent kindling in order to start up your blaze. Again, we will take to the field, with T-Wolf and Glitter (pending availability) to scavenge throughout the city.
Fire in the Whole will run once a week, from July trough to September 1st, so that my student’s might be able to apply their newly acquired skills in the Autumn dry season. The class will conclude with a pageant in which I judge all of the submitted Fire Pits (to be covered by City TV news), culminating in a magical Fire Pit Flotilla Parade down Queen Street East. (Pending municipal approval)
It’s my goal to teach my students that Fire Pits can have a meaningful and culturally relevant role in densely packed urban communities. They’re not just warm spots around which people drink, make drug transactions and have sex, but are the conduits to our souls, a place where stories are traded and character is forged.
*Unfortunately, as my class is scheduled to take place on the same night that Lost airs on TV, nobody has yet signed-up for my course. To ease any concerns that prospective students might have about missing Lost, I want everybody to know that I will have three TV’s set-up and on Lost during my class so that nobody has to miss one second.