MOONSHADOWS 🌒 Fundraising for my First Burning Man (!) Sculpture 🌙
A 16ft Tall, Light Up Obelisk? Yes, Please!
It’s happening! I’m part of my first large-scale sculpture, Moonshadows, which will debut at Burning Man this year. Our team is fundraising for the construction of Moonshadows, a 16ft tall obelisk that is lit up from the inside. This has been a dream of mine for years and your support of even $5 would mean the world! Read more about the art and concept below.
Moonshadows: A 16ft Tall, Light-Up Obelisk
A few months ago, my dear friend Tim approached me with the concept for Moonshadows: a large-scale obelisk that would sit in the middle of Black Rock Desert, Nevada, during Burning Man, a week-long art and culture festival held yearly in late August. The obelisk would be interactive: a giant sun and moon dial that casts shadows to match key moments of the week (e.g., the full moon). Built out of wood and lit up from the inside to appear like a beacon in the night, the Moonshadows obelisk would stand for only one week and be ceremonially burned down (the drama!) at the end of the festival.
For context, Tim and I had been talking about collaborating on a Burning Man project since we met in 2016. He had already started to assemble a team of architects, engineers, and optimists for Moonshadows and was looking for an artist to add to the team to bring the concept to life.
The idea was ambitious — and beautiful — and bold.
So I, of course, said yes.
Moonshadows: Challenging the Concept of Time
One of the things that most intrigued me about joining Moonshadows was the existing team’s challenge of society’s prevailing notions of time — the idea that perhaps, time is neither linear nor universal.
More from the team: “At first glance, Moonshadows is an obelisk. But on closer inspection, it's a sundial and moondial for past, present, and future events. It's a puzzle that intends to challenge your perception of time as a universal, digital, or linear measure. With Moonshadows, time is a physical system that you can observe and measure — on your own terms.”
What is our collective sense of time and how has that changed over history? Tim and another team member, Caz, briefed me on some explorations they had done into ancient time systems and historical events, from the Mayans to the Egyptians to the Gregorian calendar. We talked about where this obelisk came from: was it leftover from a different time? What was its significance? Who left it? What did they want us to find? And how does that message translate into the physical object?
I increasingly experience time as non-linear. In my practice (and in my life), I am very interested in the medial and the liminal, i.e. the ability to sit and move in between ‘regular’ and ‘non-regular’ states of consciousness — which implies the ability to move between ‘regular’ and ‘non-regular’ ‘dimensions,’ for lack of a better word. I’m a big yes to parallel universes and diverging timelines. Or rather, timelines that are not diverging, per se, but existing in tandem. A big, big yes to a non-dualistic way of thinking about time — not either/or (this happened now, this happened then), but both/and (these are happening at the same time).
I thought: what if the obelisk is not leftover from a different time, but rather, left by us at the same time that we are existing in now, but on a different timeline? What if was not so much artifact as portal — a portal that exists in between dimensions that opens at a precise moment, allowing us to move in between? What if that moment is marked by the position of the sun or moon at a specific space in the desert?
In other words — what if the obelisk marks movement not forward or backward in time, but up and down within time, across dimensions? In that it will be a physical object, what can this object and the very physical spaces it exists within represent in respect to this ‘abstracted’ idea of time? What if the obelisk was a conduit, a channel, between that up above (represented by the moon and sky) and that down below (represented by the desert)?
An Energetic Channel
Concretely, the Moonshadows obelisk has 4 distinct faces that come together to create a wooden obelisk, standing 16 feet tall. The wood panels have intricate designs that are cut out via hand or CNC machine which will also allow the structure to be lit up from the inside, so it is visible at night.
Because the structure of an obelisk is straightforward, up and down, I wanted the designs on the structure to be more dynamic. In the panels’ illustrative elements, I emphasized diagonal and curved lines that encouraged the viewer to continuously move around the structure as they experience it.
Taking inspiration from the idea of the obelisk as a channel between the above (sky/moon/sun) and the below (desert), I created an energetic wave design that would wrap around the structure and draw the eye from ground to sky and back again, up and down, back and forth.
These energetic channels are arranged to overlap both over each other and across the faces of the obelisk, allowing an uninterrupted pattern regardless of where the viewer stands. The obelisk will be placed in the middle of the desert, far away from where most people camp. As such, it will be primarily accessed via bike from any and all directions. With this in mind, it was important to create a design that would be visually captivating from all angles, since we weren’t sure where any one viewer might approach it from.
In addition to these channels, we included other design elements that were constrained to the faces themselves — an illustration of the desert, phases of the moon, fiery beings, stars… instructions for usage. But, you might just have to come to Burning Man this year to see more detail on those. 😉
The Math & The Shadows
There is a lot of math involved in Moonshadows. Needless to say, that was above my pay grade. 😂 But, it is very, very cool so a little more on that below.
The team used math to predict the shadow arcs and are placing Pillars to mark specific events (e.g., 6:21a Sunrise on Monday August 28th). At the designated times, the shadows will hit the pillars and the obelisk will achieve its function as a dial.
In other words, we’ve created something beautiful and interactive.
We’re Raising $7000 to Bring Moonshadows to Life
Where do you come in? To launch Moonshadows, we’ll need $7000 to cover costs including: structural materials, tools, hardware, design, lighting, and transportation. We’re grateful for donations of any size. The obelisk is already being constructed in the Seattle area (thanks to two of our generous team members, who have offered their home/workshop) and needs to be transported and installed in Nevada prior to the event.
Moonshadows is a labor of love and the team has dedicated significant time and personal resources to making it a reality. None of us are doing it for money (and most of us are contributing financially); 100% of donations goes to funding the cost of construction/transportation with no team members taking compensation. We have already received both approval and placement (around 2 o’clock in the deep playa) from Burning Man Org, which is already a feat in and of itself, as many art proposals do not get accepted! In other words, it’s happening — we just need the funds to get it over the edge!
If you’d like to contribute, we’ve organized perks for our donors, including commemorative takeaways that you can find on our Indiegogo page. We’ll also be organizing events on Playa to mark a few moments where the obelisk’s shadow intersects one of the pillars. We’d love to have you join — let me know if you’ll be there this year!
We also understand that not everyone is able to donate monetarily, so we’d love it if you could help us spread the word through social media or word of mouth. Again, even $5 helps!
See You on The Playa?
Phew, thank you for making it down here. If you’d like to hear more about Moonshadows, I have so much more to say and I’d love to share it with you. I hope this will be the first of many large-scale projects I’m a part of in the future, both at Burning Man and outside.
If you will be at Burning Man this year, maybe I’ll see you under a shadow… 🌙 I’m planning to be there all week until Friday, as I will have to return to the desert for a show opening on Saturday 9/2. But more on that soon! In the meantime, much love and many blessings. Hope to see you in the dust. )*(