Why did you come to this planet?
I’m here to build gigantic art that connects people with love. Love is so, so important. I’m here to build art that expands the concept of the possible—art that lasts 10,000 years and art that’s visible from space! Art that inspires people to create the future they want. Long term thinking is vital, and my art reaches to inspire that in people in a process that’s both joyful and easy to connect with. I love humans. I love creating conversations with all sorts of human minds.

Can you give an example of this kind of art?
One of my proudest accomplishments recently is the design and building of the Byrd Draw Labyrinth in Dubois, Wyoming. It’s both a classical seven-circuit labyrinth and a geoglyph in the shape of a bird, 200’ from wingtip to wingtip with a path of about 1/3 of a mile from tail to heart center. Almost all labyrinths you can find are circular or square or some other regular polygon—but the land in Dubois asked for a bird, and got one. It’s a deep meditation to walk the path, but it’s also a lot of fun to figure out where you are in the bird as you walk it. At the size it is, it won’t be visible from space, but it’ll show up on Google Maps the next time they do a flyover.

On a more intimate scale, I conceptualized and built out the Roots Network  for Dreamscapes, Salt Lake’s answer to MeowWolf. I asked participants to add to the installation by writing their inspiration, their happy place, and their legacy on recycled cardboard tags and hanging them on the structures I had built. Over nine months I gathered over 60,000 tags, some of them full of the most amazing cosmic wisdom I’ve ever encountered. Others just had dicks drawn on them! I still have all the tags, and sometimes I go through them and am re-inspired by humans and what our minds are capable of.

In the past I’ve done a bit of everything: bartending, sign painting, street dog rescue, newspaper reporting, office admin, business writing for an investment bank, life insurance sales, and feature writing for Catalyst Magazine in Salt Lake City. Currently I’m an independent artist under Toler Arts.

Burning Man profoundly changed me and enabled me to begin thinking on a larger and larger scale for my work. My resume for the event and for our regional event, Element 11, is extensive: I took placed playa art (The Green Duck) my very first year at Burning Man in 2007. I designed and built this art independently with no prior experience, gathering support from an online community with members around the globe.

2008: I returned to the playa with The $hrine, again as the solo designer and builder.
2011: Lighting lead for the Utah entry into the Circle of Regional Effigies (CORE),
2012: Design lead for the Secret Of The Bees, again Utah’s CORE entry.
2013: Design and build consultant for the Psychedelicate Arch CORE entry.
2014: Designed two different sizes of the Coontie Pod for Burning Man’s Souk and Utah’s Element 11 regional event, and also took the larger effigy to the Das Energi festival.
2015: Design lead for Element 11’s Twelvefold Temple Of The Cosmos
2016: Design lead for the Temple Of Awakening for Element 11.
2017: Design lead for Utah’s Temple of Awareness that went to Burning Man.
Subsequently I had to take several years off to cope with dying-mom stuff, but in 2024 attended Burning Man once again to see what I had been missing, and I got my mojo back.  

The Temple of Rain is my day job, and I am the luckiest human on the planet.