What Once Was Here

2021. salvaged fir, canvas, maple, simulacra. 10' x 6' x 6'

A grief portal. A public memorial to time lost.

"What Once Was Here" is a collection of pandemic stories. The simulacra holds dozens of stories of loss, life, nightmares and miracles from the last year and a half. Stories with tears of grief and joy, poetic words, heroic acts, emotional chasms, and so.much.clarity. Standing inside was Dark. Light. Life. Death. Nature. Void. The day after our opening, Nature decided to contribute her own artistic poetry by pretty much destroying two of the panels with abnormally high winds that ripped out grommets and unwove and strew our words and stories onto the surrounding hillside. About to head out of town and somewhat impressed by beauty of it (re-integration with nature, indeed), I sheared the panels in half and removed what was left of the woven maple. The panels hang now as only void against the backdrop of trees and sky.

Our stories and lives were such short moments in the larger cycle.

I am happy with this. It feels more ancient that way.

Time Out

2011. pine, wax, muslin, paper. 21' x 21'

A ritual community burn. A murmuration of important life events.

Time Out was a burn built for the Pacific NW regional burning man event. Two 65' walls that spiraled into each other, rising to 10' in the center. They effectively created a moment of isolation in the center. On one wall, I drew a 65 year timeline and invited the community to write important moments of their lives on paper starlings and hang them on the timeline. People started hanging birds in the future, too.

When we lit it on fire, at first nothing happened and then it went up in a 30' wall of flames that burned down in about a minute and a half. Only one photographer got a photo of that as everyone else was running away.

The paper birds caught fire and flew away to burn in the updraft. It was breathtaking.

Anew

2009. body casts and paper mache. lifesize.

Originally created for the aforementioned regional burn, Anew became one of Seattle's celebrated guerilla installations because I recruited a small crew and we took them down to Gasworks Park on my birthday under cover of night and left them by the water. On the cover of the Seattle Times the following day, Anew captured the city's attention and thousands of people flocked to see them over the next week. I felt connected to them all.

Anew is a meditation walk on existential awakening.

Cataclysm

2012. wood, twine, thread 16' x 14’

The burn for Critical 2012: Premageddon. This 8' globe hung suspended from 16' posts. We strung the continents on in twine and invited people to weave their personal journeys onto it in brightly colored embroidery ribbon, all converging together in one space.

For the burn, it started with a fire show based in the Aztec rituals of the directions. My carpenter, Zak, burst into the dance as a demon and scared them off. With crazed eyes, he stormed over to the globe intent on destruction. As producer of the event, I stopped him. He shoved me to the ground and ripped out my heart (a knitted heart soaked in white gas), lit it on fire, and threw it into the world causing it to burn.
I don't know why, but I didn't expect to feel so empty after.

Filaments

2009. copper, marble, cotton, steel.

In a grove of trees, Filaments of copper and cotton wove and hung between them. I made custom chimes based on Bjork songs. In the center was a portal of stone on black glass on steel. You could look down and transport into the world of quarks and waves.