It was midnight in Brussels when I received an email from the Burning Man organization. It was official. They wanted me to take my giant axolotl sculpture to Black Rock City!
During the previous months, Caroline and I had laid out a plan for this situation, and it was time to test it out. This was a huge opportunity for my sculptor career, and I would have to defeat a lot of self-doubt, especially since:
—My last monumental sculpture commission dated from almost a decade ago, and I didn’t have enough aluminum welding experience in my curriculum.
—Shipping anything from Belgium would completely destroy any budget we had, so we needed to produce and transport everything from the US. Our plan included staying somewhere near the Nevada desert for some months, renting a workshop and a trailer, then driving the art ourselves.
—The cherry on top of the monumental task ahead was money. A sculpture this size would require additional fundraising, since Burning Man only paid for half of the build.
To say this was a big challenge was an understatement, this could also turn into a complete mess. I couldn’t get back to sleep— it was time to start the build!
In 2022, during my show at the Mexican Consulate in Vegas, I met one of my now close friends, who immediately after meeting, put the idea in my head that my sculptures could make it to Burning Man.
After receiving the news, I called Luis to tell him the recent developments and recruit him as the first new crewmate of my build team. If he accepted, I would get one of the best metal artists in the Southwest on my team, all of the tips for building metal projects in Las Vegas, and a campmate for a desert adventure.
Most of my art-related fears were gone by the time I spoke to Luis, who didn’t seem worried about the build times or the fabrication process. He agreed to be on the team, and immediately found possible workshops, suppliers and specific tools for the build. One fear-monster down, a bunch more to go.
The Nevada part of the project seemed to be smooth sailing, if, and only if we could find the funds to get there and actually start the build, so we began one of the side-quests we feared most: fundraising.
Getting the funds to build the Axolotl
If you know anything about my stay in Europe, you would know that in order to stay in Belgium I had to open my own digital marketing company. While I am proud of all the skills I accrued over my years working behind a computer, my career led me to amazing opportunities, but the road was paved with hundreds of failures. Amongst those failures, one of them always haunted me: using kickstarter to fund a project.
In 2015, while I was building a metal sculpture for the city of Ath, I was also trying to make ends meet by launching a travel app, which I thought was going to revolutionize travel and put millions (or at least thousands) of dollars in my pocket. As you can imagine, the app didn’t go as planned, and I would argue the project could have gone way further if we had nailed the fundraising first.
At least I learned what NOT to do when asking for funds from friends, family and strangers.
So, with a first-hand lesson on kickstarting, I wrote down my story, created some amazing swag and shared my story with hundreds of people, through online Burning Man forums all the way to my elementary school friends from Mexico.
Being involved in a kickstarter campaign is stressful. Waking up to check how much money people pledged overnight and finding that no one contributed feels like the biggest disappointment, and somehow starts attaching a monetary value to your own self-worth.
Luckily for my ego, our campaign was a success and we managed to raise 15,000 US dollars to build a giant axolotl to show at Burning Man. It was time to pack my welding machine and head out to the desert.
The Build
Back in the main quest, Luis found me an amazing gallery and metal workshop space to build the sculpture at, Left of Center Gallery. One of the biggest selling points of this place was that I would be surrounded by a community of artists every day. The biggest setback? The workshop was an open space and I would be working during summer in Las Vegas.
As a Mexican who lived in Coahuila during childhood, I thought building art in the desert was going to be a breeze, despite many warnings from Las Vegas locals. The months I spent welding in the desert were in fact, not a breeze, and one of the hardest challenges I have experienced.
Want to put an image in your brain of what the build looked like? Check out this timelapse and watch the axolotl sculpture come to life for Burning Man 2023! Not pictured: My constant shower breaks to keep cool during peak heat hours, or the water drinking rituals that kept me alive. I was going through more than 4 liters of water per day, and sometimes taking breaks every 15 minutes!
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