What life forms might develop if their constituent molecules were dust and rust and sunlight?

The Dancing Serpent is a perfectly balanced mobile formed of a series of bent-metal pipes which each carry a segment of the serpent’s body. Lateral motive forces on the lead segment create wave-like motions through the entire sculpture. Flames rise from the spine of each segment.  The external structure of each segment forms the counterweight to balance the remaining segments.

The Serpent was built for Burning Man 2015, and just as homo-sapiens grows strange and lush in that desert habitat, I like to imagine that everything about Black Rock City - the striped tents, the night beacons, the strange crawling vehicles, the unexpected flames - are equally living products of the rare atmosphere of the desert. Here I explore what creatures might evolve there in the heat and the dust, with the sun and the wind for power, with a peacock's urges to be admired day and night, with a joy in the solitude and the rough edges of the natural world that spawned them.

The Serpent participates in this vision as a creature that has evolved to take advantage of the special affordances of a dusty alkaline lake bed. It is an encouragement to seek beauty from what might otherwise be rough metal and sharp glass, energy from the movement of the wind, and to treat with respect, and perhaps a little fear, those strange entities - human, canvas, metal, plastic, wooden - that make up the urbanized desert. 

The work interacts with its audience, draws them into its world, and makes them feel, for a few instants of contemplation, that they are not the only conscious, highly evolved beings in the dust.


The Dancing Serpent was created in partnership with June Leon and Majorelle Arts

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Finalist — Wild Heart Gallery "‘Wild Art Open 2024’, International Juried Art Exhibition