ARTISTS
Noah McGinley / Director of Art
Noah is renowned for his unique sculptural style. He creates highly intricate and complex geometry by layering wood and acrylic forms. His mastery of symmetry presents an astounding depth of content, always leaving viewers with more to discover. McGinley is based out of Oakland, CA.
Chase Putman / Mechanical Engineering and Technical Project Management
Chase is the Lead Engineer and Project Manager at Tesseract. After receiving his B.S. in mechanical engineering, he worked in industries like consumer product development, auto racing, and industrial robotics. Putnam’s skills in 3D modeling, prototype fabrication, manufacturing, and systems integration allow him to hold the visual, structural, and practical needs of each of his projects in the highest regard.
Robb Pope / Show Systems Lead
Robb Pope came into the lighting industry as a video engineer in the concert touring industry. After 5 years programming shows for artists such as Tool, No Doubt, and Green Day, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and founded Digital Ambiance, which specializes in building cutting-edge, large-scale interactive works of art. Pope is constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with light and new media technologies.
Katherine Tincher / Interior Design
Katherine Tincher specializes in unique, custom spaces, including everything from homes and furniture to bars and ice cream shops. She is no stranger to the challenges of creating art at Burning Man, and has been working on projects there since 2012. She excels in creating mixed-use environments meant to withstand the harshest conditions. Tincher has a Masters in Interior Design and Architecture, and runs her own design firm in San Francisco.
Dell Lamontange / Audio and Electrical Lead
Dell is the founder of Audiowaska Productions, where he specializes in providing power and sound production to festivals and art cars around the country. Leveraging years of experience building art cars at Burning Man and beyond, he excels at putting together weatherproof systems and solving difficult technical challenges in the field. He builds large audio systems that leave listeners stunned by fidelity at a scale they never expected.
Michelangelo Passalalpi / Lead Builder and Carpenter
As a member of both Tesseract and Audiowaska, Michelangelo Passalalpi is a master carpenter who specializes in leading teams to build large-scale, intricate works of art and stage environments. He designs the assembly and disassembly of even the most complex systems so they can be built and re-deployed easily and sustainably. Passalalpi was born in Truckee, California, and has been a fabrication and woodworking specialist for over 15 years.
Adam LaBay / Laser Lead
Adam LaBay specializes in laser effects for film and television. Using the latest technology to program and deliver sophisticated crowd-scanning and sky-sweeping visuals, he has inspired signature looks in famous music videos and delighted crowds of thousands worldwide. LaBay is the founder of Future Weapons, a laser lighting company in Los Angeles, CA.
Justin Gray / Pyrotechnics Lead
Justin co-founded fire sculpture group Therm, an underground group that built wild and complex fire sculpture and presented it internationally, pushing the envelope of audacious art and performance. He is also a member of the legendary large-scale machine performance group Survival Research Labs, a crew of like-minded techno-destructionists founded in 2006. Gray’s shop, Graywrx Fabrication, is located in Oakland, CA. There, his broad range of abilities and limitless imagination are unleashed across a variety of electronic and engineering challenges.
Ben Pollack / Producer
As a former software product manager turned artist-producer, Ben is the other half of Digital Ambiance. He manages the complex logistics and finances behind Sanctuary and is responsible for running the Sanctuary show on-site at Burning Man.
Charles Floyd / Pyro
Industrial designer, flame effects technician, enthusiastic enabler of the previously impossible. When not at Graywrx, Chuck works with private and commercial clients designing and developing pet, home, tool, fitness and medical products.
Colin Tucker / Audio and Electrical
Colin Tucker’s passions in life are audio and power. He has spent many years doing large-scale mobile power grids like the one for the Oregon Eclipse festival, and has worked audio with various companies, deploying Funktion One, d&b, Turbo, and Meyer at events all over the world. He also plays and produces music under the alias DubCOliNG.
Joshua Martin / Fabrication
Joshua Martin is a Oakland-based artist and fabricator who’s worked on stage production, building, and art fabrication alongside crews such as Coyote Prism, Audiowaska, FelixLighting, and Tesseract. Since 2009, he’s been involved in the construction and on-hand creation of projects ranging from murals, to music stages, to art cars, to installations from the Southwest to the West Coast. As an independent artisan in his off time, he combines woodwork with painting, pushing the progressive aesthetic in the Bay Area.
Kat Fry / Pyro
Kat Fry grew up in 29 Palms, in the Southern California high desert region, surrounded by desert toys like jeeps, sand buggies, and ATVs. Today she works as a fabrication technician, specializing as a MIG & TIG welder, plumber, logistics coordinator, risk assessor, outside-the-box fabricator and "propane whisperer." In the last 5 years, Fry has performed all over the country with fire installations, Tesla piano performances, LED sculptures, and art cars. She also loves working alongside inventors and engineers to build fringe development technologies and prototypes, and lives a life dedicated to the belief that no dream is too big!
Jane Poynter / Fabrication
Jane Poynter joined Tesseract and Sanctuary in December 2017 as a carpentry assistant. She specializes in woodturning and fine woodworking. Poynter received her Bachelors in Fine Art from Coe College, which included a semester studying art history and architecture in Florence, Italy. She completed courses in fine woodworking and welding from College of the Redwoods and Pacific Northwest College of Art. Poynter is also an oil painter, herbalist, and dog mom.
Orion Fredericks / Pryo
After attending the University of Alfred in NY, and the Pillchuck Glass School in Washington, Orion Fredericks became the first studio manager and volunteer coordinator at The Crucible, where he helped bring to life the vision of industrial education in the community of Oakland, CA. While teaching at The Crucible, he worked as a performance fire sculptor with Therm, exploring “the voice of the flame” by night. By day, Fredericks explored the counter-element of water through monumental fountains. Since 1999, he’s shown at venues all over the U.S.: small and large gatherings, music events, private showings, and commissioned civic installations.
Randy Randerson / Lighting
Randy Randerson is an installation solutions MacGyver for Digital Ambiance. He has gone from startup biotechnologist for C02 sequestration, to military product designer, to being seduced by motorcycles and art. He now builds, maintains, and gives life to a variety of art cars, poorly-conceived sculptures, and well-planned installations. He is responsible for the taking the digital art of the light wizards and hitting it with a hammer until it fits into the real world. With his varied bag of hammers, there’s no problem he can't nail.
Anthony Garcia / Lasers
Anthony Garcia has been creating laser shows long enough to see what's lacking in the industry: good laser programming that uses simple colors alongside complex timing and design. He's made the official live tutorials for the Pangolin Beyond professional laser and multimedia software, and has toured the world to give artists, companies, and events the lasers they deserve.
Sam Scheib
With a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sam Scheib now hails from Emeryville, CA. A creative technologist, her professional work often combines sculpture, light and digital elements, and fashion design. She enjoy mixing materials that are uncommon for a medium. Scheib was responsible for installing LEDs and wiring in hard-to-reach spaces of Sanctuary, and when not working on lighting, she did general logistics support.
Lydia Laurenson / Website Writer & Editor
Lydia Laurenson has been to Burning Man a whole bunch, and generally loves the counterculture. She has written for Vice, The Atlantic, HBR, and many other publications — including several articles about Burning Man — and has served as Managing Editor for The Battery Candy Magazine in San Francisco. Laurenson regrets that she missed Burning Man 2018 and hasn’t seen Sanctuary in person, but she’s grateful that she got to learn so much about this amazing art piece while developing the website text.