Former Beaufort Mayor shows artistic side at Burning Man
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Several years ago, former Beaufort mayor Stephen Murray was at a turning point in the life he had built when a friend reached out to him and offered him an extra ticket to an event she was going to be attending.
“I was kind of in a strange place in my life,” Murray said. “I wasn’t real happy with my day job or my hobby job. I was like, you know, this might be a fun thing to go check out and something a little different than what I might normally do.”
So, he went to his first Burning Man.
Fast forward two years, and Murray just returned from his third Burning Man in Nevada, but this one was different because this time he attended not just as an attendee, but as an artist.
That first Burning Man
Burning Man is a week-long event that takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada about 100 miles outside of Reno that is focused on “community, art, self-expression and self-reliance.”
The first year that Murray attended Burning Man in 2023, it rained the whole time and he said he “sat in the mud for a few days but just had a marvelous time.” One of the things that really stood out to him while he was there were the more than 400 pieces of art from artists all over the world, ranging from little pieces to a gigantic, tall pieces and everything in between.
“It’s really the combination of creativity and technology condensed in the desert for one week out of the year,” Murray said, “and two years ago I decided, while sitting in the mud, that I was gonna make some changes to my life.”
One of the changes he decided that he wanted to make was to take better care of his body as he felt he was out of shape, and he wanted to focus on his health.
He also decided that he wanted to focus more on his family and friends.
Finally, he wanted to rediscover the creative side of himself that he had gotten away as he got older.
“I used to build things and make things and through the course of my life, in my 20s and 30s, I kinda got away from all that because of just the responsibilities of trying to run businesses and then my public service took over my life,” said Murray.
Murray came home after Burning Man in 2023, and three weeks later, he resigned as mayor of Beaufort and resigned from the eight boards and commissions that he was serving on at the time.
‘Perspective’
Murray bought a set of 230-inch convex mirrors off Facebook Marketplace from a man in Beaufort.
At the time, he had no real idea what to do with them and he said he was staring at them on the floor of his shop one day when he realized that they looked like a giant pair of sunglasses with mirror lenses.
“Over the last year I’ve been really intrigued with this idea of perspective, and how two people can look at the same thing and have completely different perspectives on the issue or our perspective of ourselves and how we see ourselves versus how other people may see us,” Murray said.
He built the sunglasses sculpture with the mirrors and named it “Perspective.”
The mirrors that make up the lenses of the sunglasses reflect to make you look skinnier and a little taller and Murray added color-changing LED lights that are very soft and diffused around the rims of the mirrors so at night it also provides a warm, colorful glow as that slowly color fades and changes.
“I think, for the most part, it promotes a very positive sort of reflection of yourself,” Murray said about the piece of art.
Murray said that while his art instillation was simple, it was amazing to be part of the community and to bring something for people to enjoy.
“At night I kind of sat back as a voyeur and watched people interact with the piece over a couple of days and it brought me a lot of joy to see people be whimsical and silly, dancing and taking pictures and selfies in front of it,” Murray said. “Yes, it’s a silly 6-foot pair of sunglasses, but maybe it is a little more meaningful and helping people see their reflections and a perspective of themselves in a positive light in it and, at a minimum, may create some intentional joy and some fun, which I think we need more of today.”
Murray almost didn’t apply to have his piece displayed in the Burning Man art placement, stating that he “had no business taking [his] little sunglasses out there” because he is not an artist.
He just got home from his most recent trip to the Nevada desert with his giant pair of sunglasses, but he said that this experience brought him a lot of joy and he is already thinking about other pieces and what he might do for future Burning Man events.
“I’ve got a trailer full of dusty stuff,” said Murray. “I’m still recovering and just haven’t had the energy to crack it open and tackle it yet.”
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
