Sculptor hopes to inspire change with art

People will climb a rope ladder to a platform and rub desert sand against an 8-foot-tall bronze statue.

They will ask themselves a question in the middle of Nevada's Black Rock Desert: What do I really want?

This is Matthew Welter's idea for an interactive art exhibit for the Burning Man arts and culture festival this summer.

Welter, owner of Timeless Sculptures in Carson City, said he wants to shift the country's way of thinking with his art. He said people need to learn that they will succeed if they think positively and are committed to their dreams.

That mission starts when they find out want they want, he said.

"Until we can discover that ourselves," he said, "we are like a leaf in the wind."

Welter hopes to find commissions to fund the bronze pieces of his Burning Man display. The interactive art exhibit will likely have two sculptures carved from cedar tree stumps and brass castings of each of those sculptures.

One of the sculptures is a 30-foot-tall take on the Statue of Liberty called "The Hand of Order," and the other is an 8-foot-tall hand called "The Secret Power of Attraction."

The entire exhibit, his fourth at Burning Man, will be called "The Secret."

The artist, who sports a full, long brown beard, said he wants to celebrate the "liberty of the mind" and freedom in America.

He wants to continue the work on his art exhibit when he gets back to Carson City from Burning Man. He will look for commissions to set up more bronze castings of the sculptures around the city.

The castings might be used to develop the idea park of sculptures he brought up five years ago. The park would be a 20-acre site at Highways 50 West and 395.

He said he wants to capture the spirit of the Statue of Liberty.

"I can't go for size, so I'm going for volume," he said.

Paul Rolke of Austin, Texas, who commissioned the "The Hand of Order" and "The Secret Power of Attraction," said he likes what the Statue of Liberty represents.

"It's just a reminder of how blessed we are," he said. "It's a place where you can say really bad things about people in power and you don't disappear in the middle of the night."

Rolke and Welter met last year at Burning Man, the weeklong counterculture festival in the Black Rock Desert that Rolke described as "a pretty bizarre kind of deal, if you like that kind of thing."

Rosie Stanton of Carson City is helping Welter get his art ready for Burning Man, Aug. 31 to Sept. 7 this year. She said she found he was a "great man and he's got a big heart" after he let her join him and other artists at their camp.

Welter is a new kind of artist for the new century, Stanton said, and his politics and art mix together perfectly to inspire people.

"He's got kind of gravity about him," she said.

- Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.