How Burning Man Empowers Artists — From Black Rock City to the World

Imagine taking a special lens as you peer around the Black Rock City playa, one that allows you to experience the decades-long journey of every artist and crew that created each mind-bending work of art. You would encounter some astonishing stories and learn that the playa art that leaps and sparkles around you is merely the latest manifestation of circuitous creative paths. Many of the artists you will encounter were Burners first. They became empowered to create art in Black Rock City. As their work grew in scope and scale, they wanted to do more and impact the world. Today, Burner artists’ creations spark awe and gather people in cities and cultural festivals around the world.

Read on to meet three fascinating artists who have lived this journey — two who became artists because of their experiences in Black Rock City, and one who continues to develop and deepen her artistic capabilities through the work she installs on playa. All three are living their lives as working artists, while bringing their work into communities well beyond the desert.

Black Rock City Honoraria grants only partially fund artists’ Black Rock City journeys. Many artists roll out crowdfunding campaigns to cover build and transportation costs. Find a project to support here.

Burning Man Opens Doors that Invite Exploration and Inspire People to Become Artists

By design, Black Rock City and Burning Man Regional Events encourage people to explore and create art.

Valerie Mallory, whose dreamy casted sculptures have graced Black Rock City for more than two decades, began her artist journey as a volunteer at the Center Camp cafe. In 1999, for her second year on playa, she brought and painted mannequins to install in the cafe. In 2000, her mannequins were placed on the Center Camp stage. From there, year after year she designed displays for the stage and her partner painted the backdrop. 

Since 2014, Valerie has brought a piece to playa every year — a total of eight unique installations. In 2023 “Womantree” was installed in front of the California State Capitol in Sacramento as part of the California 100 Youth Summit.

Valerie learned to cast out of a desire to make hands and feet for her mannequins. She lacked funds for formal art classes; staff at her local sculpture store taught her to cast hands, and later, faces. “One thing led to another, and I started doing more and more castings and adding onto the mannequins more and more. After a while, I jumped in and started casting people.”

“I was very, very deeply involved with the cafe… It was a nice little safe place to be. I could camp with them every year, and I could bring my art. It was just an integral part of my life. Then one year they told me, ‘Your pieces are getting really big, probably too big to be in here.’”

Staff at the cafe encouraged Valerie to install her work on the open playa. Reluctant at first, she took the leap in 2014 and brought “Womantree,” a large scale sculpture made from multiple casted female forms. “That was it. Then I learned that I could learn how to do lighting and learn how to do pieces that would stand up in the desert and learn how to be independent of the cafe and be totally on my own. And that’s how that began.”

“You don’t know what you can do until you’re given a great big desert and be told, ‘Okay, here’s all the space you could possibly want. It’s up to you now to figure it out.’” – Valerie Mallory

“I feel like I’ve been getting a doctorate in art by going to Burning Man… bringing something out,” Valerie observed. “What else will give you that experience? What else will really test you like that? What else will bring you to the very edge of what you can do? Plus, I was fascinated by what I was able to do and how I was able to really challenge myself and see it through… If it hadn’t been for Burning Man, I wouldn’t have ever started casting.” 

Valerie is currently preparing “Womantree” to return to Black Rock City 2024 to mark the artwork’s 10th anniversary. 

“Womantree” by Valerie Mallory, 2014 (Photo by John David Tupper)

Valerie with her piece “Bottled Up Genie,” 2019

“Womantree” by Valerie Mallory, in front of the California State Capitol, 2023

Meet Tahoe Mack, a Las Vegas artist who brought her first piece “The Monumental Mammoth” to Black Rock City when she was 18 years old. To build her piece, Tahoe welded together metal trash found in a local park and fossil field. In 2024 “The Monumental Mammoth” was permanently installed near the park that inspired her work.

Art Shifts Perspectives and Inspires People to Engage with the World

Building Burning Man art is empowering. Burning Man Project is the nonprofit in service to this wildly creative global cultural movement. Since 2014, we’ve given $11 million in Black Rock City Honoraria grants, which help emerging and established artists build and bring their work to the playa.

Art sparks new perspectives, opportunities and relationships. Through their journey to build and bring their work into the world, artists can become teachers and community leaders whose positive impact extends well beyond their creative endeavors — into social and humanitarian projects.

Whether you’ve been to Black Rock City, or are simply an admirer of playa art, you’ve likely seen “ATABEY’s Treasure,” the whimsical fish that rose on playa in 2023. ATABEY was artist NiNo Alicea’s third Black Rock City artwork. Burning since 2011, NiNo brought “Got Framed” to playa 2015 and 2016. Then he began to dream big. 

“My experience with ‘Got Framed’ was the first time that I called myself proudly an artist.” – NiNo Alicea

In 2017 he became the first Puerto Rican artist to receive a Black Rock City Honoraria grant, for “MÚCARO,” a giant wooden owl, the mascot of Puerto Rico and a testament to the wisdom teachers. “MÚCARO” was dedicated to my mom as a teacher, but it was also dedicated to education, knowledge and educators everywhere…” NiNo explained.

Immediately following the 2017 Burn, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. “My priorities completely flipped and changed. My best friend and I did a drive here in Los Angeles… We got so many donations, we had no idea where to store them, where to put them. We found a Burner who had a space, and that’s where we put all the donations until we organized them and put them in pallets for them to be picked up and brought to Puerto Rico.” NiNo traveled to Puerto Rico to ensure his donations were distributed ethically. “It was intense. I went through the whole part of not having electricity, not having water. I kept seeing the amount of help still needed.”

He wanted to do more. On the flight home he came up with MÚCARO for Puerto Rico, a vision to install MÚCAROs around the island as a tool for environmental education. In 2019, NiNo worked with locals in Loíza, Puerto Rico, to paint “MÚCARO’s Rising,” a vibrant mural of MÚCARO on a basketball court. “We invited the community. They painted with me. It was such a beautiful experience… They kept coming because they were enjoying it so much.”

NiNo recently collaborated with a science museum at another Puerto Rico municipality to build an interactive tree sculpture for children. The project is still under wraps until it opens. In negotiating the contract, NiNo ensured that only Puerto Ricans were hired to work on the project. He wanted to inspire talented local artists to dream bigger, and to get paid for their work. “It was a really gratifying experience… working with super talented artists on the island,” he added.

NiNo and his crew are currently hard at work in his LA studio, building “COQUÍ,” the singing Puerto Rican frog that will rise as his new Black Rock City Honoraria installation. He’s also animating one of the six chambers beneath the 2024 Man Pavilion. Prepare to voyage through the looking glass…

“I think it’s inspiring, being able to create something from nothing, being able to imagine what you think might be impossible, to be possible. And the fact that we continue passing it on. When I bring someone new to have this experience with me and they actually have their own experience, and then they become a vessel for that inspiration to someone else… It gets to the point we’re passing the baton.”

NiNo and ATABEY’s Treasure, 2023 (Photo by Jane Hu)

MÚCARO’s Rising, by NiNo Alicea, 2019 (Photo courtesy of NiNo Alicea)

NiNo and MÚCARO, 2017 (Photo by Patrick Kelley)

Art Placed Beyond Black Rock City Sparks Connection Around the World

As art in Black Rock City grew in scope and complexity, it gained attention. Artists began to install participatory creative experiences and public art beyond our temporary city, to permanent cities around the world. These interactive works of art reach people who may never visit Black Rock City or a Regional Event, sparking moments of awe that open minds to new creative vistas.

Artist Jen Lewin’s trajectory from 1990s Black Rock City to installing large scale public art around the world is one of constant innovation and experimentation. Prior to her first Burn, in 1997, she had already decided to become an artist. When she heard that a friend had received a grant to bring his art to Black Rock City, she began to imagine possibilities. “I started to look at it through a different lens, a lens of ‘how could I bring art there?’” Eight years later, in 2005, she brought her first piece, “THE ARC HARP,” to Black Rock City. “I never stopped. Almost every other year I was coming with a piece of art.”

“Be focused on just the love and the practice that should be part of your everyday experience and break it down so it’s achievable.” – Jen Lewin

Jen was always thinking about how her work could live beyond the desert. “I always saw Burning Man as this really amazing kind of think tank where I could take work and test it. I did always have this goal of wanting it to go out into the public… I wanted a true public art experience in a park where people could discover it and find it, not necessarily travel to Black Rock City. I wanted to bring work into the world.”

From “The Pool” in 2008 to “The Ursas” in 2023, Jen’s vibrant, interactive pieces have shaped the definition of what’s possible for public art. Her pieces illuminate public spaces around the world, inviting people to touch, inhabit and play with them. 

It took the art world a while to acknowledge the relevance of work by Lewin and other artists emerging from Black Rock City. “When I first started bringing artwork to Burning Man, I definitely got, ‘Sorry, that’s not art, that’s technology,’ from the art world… Then you started to see all these cities doing light festivals. And Burning Man was really leading the way. Top artists began coming out and doing pieces in big, now very respected light festivals. That flourished. You ended up with a whole community of artists who are doing this…”

Decades after her mind opened to the potential of bringing art to Black Rock City, and after installing her work in cities around the world, Jen still finds inspiration in the vast potential of the playa. “There’s something about the expansiveness of the environment itself. You have this perfect canvas — it’s this flat canvas that speaks to doing giant things… It’s very different from my public art practice where I’m putting these sculptures in cities and [dealing with] the sidewalks and the constraints of the city.”

The adventure continues. Jen’s design was selected to be the 2024 Black Rock City Man Pavilion. “The Other” features eight gracefully curved tentacles that wind as stairways and ramps. The design is inspired by the innately human curiosity about octopus intelligence. “We want to find another conscious being that we can communicate with. We want it so much… What I really love about it is you are on a journey to explore it. There’s no real center. You can’t go to the top and all be together. You can run up one of these pathways and then you can run down and run up another pathway and then run down and run up another pathway. So it’s really about the searching.”

“The Last Ocean” by Jen Lewin — Sydney, Australia, 2022 (Photo courtesy of Jen Lewin Studio )

Jen Lewin and friends installing “The Ursas,” 2023 (Photo by Gurpreet Chawla)

“The Super Pool” by Jen Lewin, 2013 (Photo by Duncan Rawlinson)

YOU Are Part of this Wildly Creative Global Cultural Movement

Feeling inspired? We hope so. However your Burning Man journey began, it is far from over. You are the navigator and captain of your dusty ship. What would you like to bring to the desert, to your community, or to the world? Start where you are. You have time and access to boundless expertise in this ever-inventive community. We are SO curious to see what you create.

Burning Man Project is the nonprofit in service to this global cultural movement, in all its wild manifestations. Your tax-deductible donation will support our year-round work stimulating innovation and creativity, in Black Rock City and beyond.

Cover image of “The Ursas” by Jen Lewin, 2023 (Photo by Stephane Lanoux)