About this piece

In 2019, I entered burning man feeling energetically depleted and sick. Someone important to me had been going through a tough time and once I finally got some space to redirect my attention to myself, I realized just how poorly I’d been tending my own garden during this time. As I was riding my bike aimlessly though the dwindling light, I had a dramatic and beautiful vision. I saw an image of a tree with branches extending in all directions, but the tree was rooted firmly into the earth, drawing up a massive and unlimited amount energy so it wasn’t depleted by everyone trying to pick its fruit.

The vision was so powerful that tears started streaming down my face and I understood why I’d been so sick for so many months. I’d been unmoored, unrooted, and ungrounded. Through my tears of understanding, I saw something silvery glittering far off in the distance and my bike sort of steered itself towards it. A minute or so later, Michael Benisty’s magnificent goddess tree sculpture materialized out of the fading light, a veritable burning bush considering I’d seen almost its exact form in my mind minutes before I saw it with my eyes.

Knowing this tree was going to make a prominent appearance in my art, I made sure to circle back to get good shots of it the next day. At sunset, I made my way over to the sculpture and began gushing over it to a beautiful woman standing nearby. As it turned out, the artist that created the tree was her boyfriend, and was standing by his bike right next to me. Michael Benisty is an insanely talented, kind and humble human being, a true art shaman. We spoke for about 20 min, and when I asked him if it would be ok to use his tree in my work he said “I can’t wait to see what magic you make from my magic.” In my intention to create magic from magic, I got a lot more than I bargained for. I got to experience the power and beauty of a piece of art, and the same qualities in the man that made it. And now that I have created myself as a goddess anchored to the earth, I sure do feel like one.