Each year at fall equinox, a strange and fiery thing takes place in Homer.

Admittedly strange things take place in Homer -- and other small Alaska towns -- all the time without regard to celestial convergences.

But this one's different, conceptually elegant, emotionally visceral, beautiful. And the fiery part has nothing to do with politics, property lines, access to fish or any of the other things that usually inflame one Alaskan against his or her neighbor.

The fire is contained to the thing itself, a combination of very short-lived found art sculpture, performance art and ritual called Burning Basket. Volunteers will spend this week assembling the basket on the beach at the base of Homer Spit and, next Sunday, they'll gather at sundown to burn their work.

Homer basket maker Mavis Muller has facilitated the construction and ensuing celebration since 2004 and even taken the idea to sites in the Lower 48 and Hawaii.

"I come into the workshop each year with a structural design and materials list," she said. "Sometimes it is sketched on paper, sometimes a small model."

She also brings enough raw material to get things going for the first couple of days, alder and spruce branches, bundles of grass or nettles. "More materials show up during the week as participants go out gathering," she said.

The details of the design, lines, circles and other patterns on the form evolve over the course of construction as a collaborative effort.

The big basket, upwards of 10 feet tall, is only part of the installation. Another recurring component is the "Trilogy Labyrinth." Muller described it as "a tri-form, circular walking path that winds around to the center and then back out again."

Like the basket, the labyrinth is a collaboration. Muller draws the basic line on the ground with a stick, then others embellish it with rocks, driftwood, arrangements of found objects. Sometimes the designs spell out words.

Words are also part of the basket. Each year's basket has a title. The first Homer basket, in Sept. 2004, was "Adieu -- Basket of Remembrance & Unburdening." It was followed, two months later, by "Overflow -- Basket of Gratitude & Manifestation" in Half Moon Bay near San Francisco.

This year's assemblage is titled "Sustain." It's also a "Basket of Remembrance & Unburdening" as was last year's "Surpass" and all other Homer baskets since the inception of the event.

As the titles suggest, these works of art are intended to stimulate some degree of active catharsis. On the final day the basket and labyrinth are "given" to the community and the world.

People are "invited to creatively interact with both installations," Muller said. Some may add a few final decorative touches. Others may insert scrolls containing written sentiments or wishes.

As the sun goes down, the basket is set on fire. A troupe of local performers demonstrate "fire spinning," a dance-like twirling of fire balls and hoops and such, accompanied by drummers. Muller called it "a stunning visual against the night sky."

It all sounds thoroughly Dionysian -- though not completely; unlike the bacchanals of antiquity, this is billed as a non-drinking celebration.

But even that most Apollonian and cerebral artist, German composer Richard Wagner, might concur with the temporary aesthetics. He considered a similar communal conflagration for his four opera cycle, "The Ring of the Nibelung." He would build a giant wooden festival auditorium and perform the work three times and then, with performers and audience gathered around, ignite the opera house and toss the manuscript into the flames himself so that the experience could never be recreated.

Wagner built the auditorium and wrote the operas, but changed his mind about the immolation. After more than a century, the Festspielhaus still showcases performances of "The Ring" every year.

The Homer festival, on the other hand, is planned from the start to have a brief life and blazing exit. The emotions represented in the work are supposed to be exercised or exorcised in the process. One might say that remembrance is made complete and unburdening is accomplished in what Muller described as a "final releasing conclusion through fire."

Just as the gathering of the material is done to heighten awareness of the local ecology and natural world, so the basket's impermanence "heightens our awareness to be present in the moment, to utilize this opportunity disguised as loss and bear witness to a community letting go," she said.

The ashes blow into the sky above Kachemak Bay. Rain washes away the soot soon enough. Eventually wind and water erase the labyrinth.

The pieces are "temporary works to sustain permanency through our personal and social imagination," Muller explained. "When the installations are gone, we don't regret, we bask in the afterglow -- and then set out to do it again."

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.

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