Art-Science Wizard Portfolio

This event took Shoshana, Eren and myself to Lake Perris for a fun art and music festival. This was the first time the public had seen the spike lights. They looked great and could be seen iconically from far away like a pair of glowing parentheses. I had lots of fun exploring the festival and made many wonderful friends along the way.

In March 2019 I went to Bombay Beach Bienialle. I found a pile of old bike wheels, got permission and assembled them with wire into a truncated icosahedron. I painted the wheels white and my friend created code for moving color to be projected over it. The ball was up high on a 30 ft multi story structure built from pallet racks. It looked beautiful up close and from a far. Thanks to QJ, LUKE, and Raphael for support. The Bienialle was a blast. Such an interesting place to explore.

During the Thanksgiving holiday, Insomniac invited me to bring Ascension to Dream State 2018. The event was in San Bernadino, 50 miles east of Los Angeles. I really enjoyed the event and saw what it was like to assemble Ascension by myself.

The sculpture was given incredible placement centered on the main stage and I watched everyone having a great time cranking the wheel. There was an amazing performance at the end of the event by Laser Face. I was blown away.

One of my favorite parts of having art at events is getting to meet other artist. At this event I really enjoyed meeting Prescott McCarthy and his friend John Michael. I had been a long time fan of his projects at Symbiosis and had a fun time brainstorming ideas with him.

For Decompression 2018, I decided to transform the top of ascension into a light helicopter. In the week leading up to the event I installed a central pole that had a crank circle on it like the Umbrellyfish Sculpture. At the end of each helicopter blade was two spinning rings. My friend Isaac gave me three mercury based slip rings so that power and data could travel through the parts while they turned.

My main intention with this configuration was to make long exposure images with the LED wheels as they were cranked around by people under neath. Conor and I stayed up all night the night before the festival to try to make the LED rings work. I remember how excited we were when we got it working. Then we put it on the sculpture and it didnt work. :( sad face. But the next day we got two of them working and at night made some of the first long exposure images. we were so stoked!!!

In 2018, I built an art piece that was conceptually a ladder that rolled around. I designed the tower to be light but strong enough to hold people and a heavy rainbow refractive gyroscope at the top. Sunday(preburn), with the power of Project Flashlight (Neal Strickberger), super bright focused beams of light shone through the gyroscope while the motor spun the 36” disc around. The result was huge rainbows projected out over the playa’s surface. Everyone wanted to dance in the rainbows and ride through the color. Monday night, adding some holographic rectangles to the seat, made brilliant rainbows on the ground. After the burn on saturday, I manually dragged Ascension around to different sculptures I liked to compare its size. Sunday morning I was very tired and my good friend with the banjo there towed me around in the chair. It felt very royal. Sunday night the whole gang watch the temple burn from the chair. It was nice to have everyone together.

In June of 2018, I attended Enchanted Forest festival. I again brought Sky portal and Cubix to the Branches mobile gallery. It felt like everyone loved the two sculptures even more this time.

The placement in the gallery with respect to the sun makes them glow at certain times during the day. They were magical moments.

I really like working with the Branches Gallery and look forward to being there again.

Early in 2018 Insomniac invited me to propose a project for EDC2018. I had already made a small hexagonal mirror curtain and had been showing it off on instagram. I proposed at first to make a 60’ mirror curtain and quicky changed that to 30 feet to match the funding. It was still a daunting task that had to be completed by the middle of May.

I began to make it myself and as I posted images it became apparent that I wasn’t going to finish without help. My friend Gizmo came up to Oakland from LA and Kendrick and Shoshana all labored intensly on laying the mirrors while I was down in the metal shop.

In the shop I fabricated Tom33 (ta-mee). Tom33 was a sort of non animated robot. He has ipads for eyes and sends a video signal of the screen adjacent to the spacewave curtain up to the projector. The projector projects on what Tom33 is looking at and so a video feed back loop is formed.

When Martin and I got to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway where EDC is held we still had to peel 9000 of the protective coatings off the 2” hexagon mirrors. It was hard work and our fingers were pretty messed up at the end of peeling them all off.

Once the stickers were all peeled, we assembled the metal snake that clamped it to the 30’ span of 20”truss and fork lifted it into position. The effect of looking at the curtain is quite mesmerizing.

In the spring of 2018 I attended a small festival in the woods called lucidity. It was a magical place of nature and fun. I installed two smaller sculptures that I had made of acrylic and steel in the Branches mobile Gallery.

The one with the cube in the center is called Cubix. The One with the Lense in the center is called Sky portal. Sky portal was in the front of the gallery and it was heart warming to find that couples would come to the gallery multiple times to look at each other through the lens. It was an unintended but great result.

Cubix was in the back of the Gallery and got way more attention than sky portal. People loved to spin it and even though it is a bit delicate, it remained unharmed.

This was such a fun event. My friend Dicapria brought her Gummy Bear Pyramid, Martin Taylor brought his Zoa, and Dustin Hoffman broght Shelly. I brought an early stage of The Jupiter Gyro project and I made an entirely new Mandala Color wheel!  We used Neal Strickberger's Super powerful spot lights and a fog machine and smoke ring shooters. Everyone had a blast!!

This time I only got one night to play with my contraption but it was still super fun. Bear, my friend in the photo there had to constantly be putting the pulley rope back over the small color wheel in the center. But then, you could tug on both sides of the rope pulling down slightly harder on one side and really get both wheels spinning fast. Even though it was simpler than last years project, Twin Spin, I found that it was easier to control and I really wanted to get another look at the big color beam in all that dust.  Much thanks to nice folks at Phage camp who welcomed me into their great camp and brought my sculpture back to SF for me.  They are the best!

I was invited to do an installation inside for Ghost Ship 2016 which was held at its normal place, Pier 70. I brought a color wheel, a 750watt spot, a 1k spot, and 3 smoke ring shooters. The party was for two nights and both nights were great fun. There were so many fun costumes that came to play in the smoke and the colors. 

Early in January I traveled up to Gowanas Brooklyn to create a light art installation with my friend George Delbario. Using his gels at his Gowanas Loft photo studio  we made 4 plastic color wheels and I fabricated some crank handles next door at Serett Metal Works. The crank handles went on top of c-stands George rented some Leiko lights from the lighting and camera rental place down the street.  

It was bitter cold out but we opened the windows and pointed the lights at te huge bridge platform of Smith and Ninth st. station. We had such a good time all week experimenting with the shapes we could make and then we would slowly turn the wheels to watch the colors move over the 80' tall structure.  

That week I also fabricated a giant 12' prism shaped enclosure to hold smoke as a cloud chamber for the opening night.

Another week went by and I put all my fun contraptions into a storage unit under the same bridge. All except a little water prism. With the little prism, several tall black foamcore walls, a mirror, using a huge 20'x20' silk diffuser, George and I made my first Rainbow Curtain installation. The Rainbow Curtain was so fun for people to play with on closing night. Pushing into the curtain would cause color to surround your touch on both sides.

That night towards the end of the show, snow began to fall outside and I have a distinct memory of the crimson red and lavish blue filling the flakes with color as they fell into the light going out the windows.  Spectrum II was a great experience and I will always cherish that time.

For this installation I brought the holographic gyroscope and this octagon mirror spinner. Groups of people waited in line to have their photos taken in the rainbows. The light created such a warm fun atmosphere. This event traditionally takes place at Pier 70 in San Francisco.

Right after I had finished doing Spectrum I in Brooklyn I flew home to SF and spent the first two days of Burning Man in my garage building the Rainbow pinwheel. I threw it in my jeep and drove to the playa!

The Rainbow Pinwheel worked really well with Neal Strickberger's super powerful searchlights Project Flashlight. The rainbows went well out into the night and the flickering the device caused when it spun attracted lots of people to come see what was going on.

Neal is a great man to work with and be around. He is always patient and will explain all the complicated science that makes his lights work. I had met him one year before when I had been standing on a wooden spiral roof building looking out across the landscape to see what I thought was special. His lights REALLY caught my attention. I rode my bike over and I told Neal I had some holographic panels. He said "go get them!"  A clumsy bike ride later I was back with these same two panels and I held them up in front of the lights and bam!!! Such powerful rainbows everywhere. I am so glad I went over to the lights that night!

In July 2014 I traveled to Brooklyn to create an installations of spectrums and light. The venue was a huge brick building that simultaneously housed a metal fabrication shop and exhibited emerging artists. 

    During my residency there, I collected materials to build light contraptions that I felt would allow user participation and make good displays of color. Two water prisms made raainbows, the tessellated mirror made triange beams, a smoke ring box made donuts in the rainbows or lasers, the laser harmonograph created green beams across the space, a mylar kalideoscope let peoople see in a new way, a parachute sphere that hung from the ceiling allowed people to go into a rainbow womb and a glass castle filled with water balanced precariously at the edge of the mezzanine.

   The time I spent there is very special to me and has influenced me greatly as an artist and as a fabricator.

This was my first big Rainbow Art installation. In April of 2014 David Curiel invited me to decorate for a party he was throwing in the Mission. I gave my self 1 week to build a 9' diameter Dodecahedron and drive a bunch of my personal contraptions across the mission to Superior Auto a cool old warehouse.

I completed the Dodecahedron. Then, hung up two parachutes I had sewn together tied to a fan that blew air down from the ceiling.  I brought the holographic cube and the holographic gyroscope and a cool tank searchlight I was borrowing from Neal Strickberger. I also brought my laser harmonograph and a mirror to shine it off of.

The night went really well and lots of people came, There was a huge number of people inside the rainbow parachute blob and I think that was everyone's favorite thing. 

It was really great of David Curiel to give me that opportunity to show me the fun in completing rainbow geometric installations in big spaces.