About this piece

I started working on "Weight of the World" one day after a 28 hour exodus from my 6th Burning Man. This burn was very different than any other I’d experienced. The intensity of the heat that knocked out our power every day was beyond anything I'd ever experienced there... even the nights were hot. The unrelenting and ever-present dust that filled my sinuses every 5 minutes and stole my voice before the burn officially began was caused by the lack of rainfall on the playa this year.  There was not enough water on playa to keep the dust at bay, nor was there enough fuel to power the generators or ice to keep people cool.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out where the manic drive to create was coming from, as the two-week odyssey had left me feeling emotionally empty, physically tapped out, and frankly uninspired.  But as I was filming myself move, a vision of a burning, polluted, trash filled earth entered my consciousness. The footage I chose to use in this piece is the actual moment I channeled the vision of the world in which I wake up and am subsequently trapped. Inspiration appeared, just not in the form I was accustomed to receiving it.

As I was wondering how I was able to create such a deeply personal piece from what felt like a void, I remembered a passing thought I had as I was riding my bike through one of the many dust storms. “This dry, dusty, barren world might be our new reality.”

The conditions on the playa were the direct result of climate change. Mother Nature is screaming in pain, and I didn't hear her, really HEAR her, until I made this piece. If not for the strange psychic thread that fuels my work and my creative life force, I would have come away from this burn with nothing. But I came away with the most important thing imaginable. A message directly from the mother of us all, sneakily delivered though my artistic process.