Support Bellingham Artist's Sculpture and Burning Man Vision

"Compulsive and Mindlessly Obsessed Artist Makes Poor Financial Decisions!" is hardly a banner headline that should surprise anyone -- I'm kinda painfully aware that the world has far bigger issues than my current plight here!

But, well, the reality is that I appear to have leveraged my monomania for finishing this sculpture, getting it to Burning Man, and seeing it displayed in full glory -- even if temporarily -- as a mission somehow MORE IMPORTANT THAN FOOD, RENT, OR SANITY ITSELF.

(Old version here) I am leaving for the desert today. It will be installed. And I will be fine no matter what.

But, holy crap, this nearly two-year mission of mine has been stressful and wildly expensive.

I have taken six prior sculptures to this annual event. Of the five sculptures I have donated to my hometown, two of them started from nothing more ambitious than "I wonder what this exotically heavy and glistening weird turd would look like in the middle of a massively hostile desert?" The ritual and the process of doing that, somehow, miraculously, has been a huge motivation for the bulk of my art.

I've never once been paid for my art -- my hometown, in Bellingham, Washington, has a visceral hatred of me because I tend to install guerilla sculptures without the consent of our local Art Commission. My work nonetheless ends up being appreciated and popular here; "Grace," installed illegally upon a small island in Bellingham Bay, consistently ranks as this town's most adored sculpture, for example, and my 2022 (legal) donation of "Acid Redux" immediately activated an otherwise ignored and bereft section of the Connelly Creek Natural Area -- someone promptly donated a public bench to accompany the piece and the City now mows the formerly feral area regularly.

I think my persistence embarrasses and enrages the bureaucracy somehow, so they reject any of my efforts for grant applications, compensation, or even my most thoughtful and polite formal proposals -- when funded RFPs do magically arise -- for adding art to this community.

This is all a windy way of saying that the local City staff and Arts Commission dislike me: While I would have been thrilled if a benevolent billionaire wanted to buy this unusual new piece from me, the fact of the matter is that I will most likely be forced to once again donate my work to the City and, in this case, will continue to try to add enchantment and interest to one of Bellingham's largest, poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods (I live in the Happy Valley 'hood. We had zero public art here until I donated 'Acid Redux' a few years ago.)

A generous donor, who apparently REALLY likes my art, has already gifted me $10k to support the nearly two years of welding and fabrication of this massively complicated, 14 foot-tall, piece.

It wasn't enough, as it turned out: I have receipts totaling over $5k just for the various widgets and gee-gaws needed to add lights, build the mason bee nests, the bird houses, and figure out the drainage and structural requirements for the 11 "green roof" planting beds (eventually to be filled with live plants) that decorate most of the bolt-on elements of this thing. As with my prior work, a raised pollinator garden "bed" will be beneath this sculpture and will hide whatever engineered structural concrete base it requires ... more damn money I don't have and, in any case, probably not worth fretting over right now.

Getting it to Burning Man, to finally see it not bolted to the side of my garage or mashed in an unattractive alleyway, was a somewhat selfish and idiotic mission on my part. I really can't afford this shit, after all. But I did all the work, got support from BM.org and a gifted ticket from (excellent) Artery staff, and felt like I could pull it off with reasonable amounts of financial discomfort.

Three days into my trip, however, I started getting increasingly panicked text messages from the posse of friends and a paid pet-sitter who were taking care of my dog.

I couldn't respond -- there was no phone service available for me -- but the situation sounded massively dire as a cyst had suddenly flared up, burst, and infected my poor critter's jaw. He was in great shape a few days before. Now, suddenly, it looked possible he could die at any moment.

I had to make the impossible and responsible choice to spend all night ripping up my camp, disassembling and loading my sculpture, and then getting my ass home as quickly as possible. I wasn't going to burden my roommate and friends with the responsibility of managing this crisis, nor abandon my best furry friend, so I crushed the 14 hour drive and got my booty back home.

The dog, DeeDee, looks like he's going to be fine.

I just took him for a drugged-up and woozy walk (he was drugged, I was woozy) and am so grateful that antibiotics and a swift emergency surgery to stanch the runaway infection were, hopefully, all he needed to get out of immediate danger.

I had posted this fundraiser request prior to even leaving for Burning Man. My Art Liason said it was not uncommon for artists to make appeals of this sort and lean upon the community for support in getting their work to that anvil of dust, heat, and glory known as Black Rock City.

But now I am kinda deeply and doubly screwed, back home, and facing a mess of new bills above and beyond the debts I saddled myself with to try to finish this thing and get it to Nevada.

I definitely harbored some tenuous goals of getting this piece either sold or installed magically in some bizarre community that actually support$ public art via this year's Burn: I know that happens to a certain proportion of the hundreds of sculptures that don't go up in flames there. But that was a background fantasy of mine, and a selfish one, that seems to have backfired pretty spectacularly due to a mess of my own risks and some Satanic circumstances working against that happier, less poverty-inducing, outcome.

My past endeavors have been accomplished without fanfare and groveling of this sort.

I am not thrilled with begging or even comfortable with whatever keeps compelling me to pursue such challenging or financially disastrous "hobbies" as large-scale guerilla art or, via my other unhealthy side-gig, rouge tree planting, here in Bellingham.

But a few friends said I should at least ask the question here and they encouraged me to "just do a GoFundMe" rather than simpering in quiet distress.

So here it is:

Can you spare some cash for the unwise decisions of an obsessed and poor artist so that, if nothing else, he can live to do more questionable and unwise things?

If so, wow! -- I would greatly appreciate it at this time!

Thanks so much for reading my sordid saga here and for considering my request. And thanks, especially, to those who already have pitched in!

❤️

-- Alex McLean / PixieMeat