The Skywheel Project is a public art project that invites people from around the world to share their personal prayers for the future of our planet. The focal point of the project is the Skywheel space satellite that will house these prayers, and when launched, will pass over every place on Earth in a regular cycle for a thousand years .

Skywheel Satellite Design

Skywheel Art

Skywheel Interaction and Performance

Skywheel Exhibition Tour

Contributing Text to the Skywheel

Skywheel Philosophy

Instragram: #skywheelproject

In 2008, while studying the archives of rocket pioneer, Robert H. Goddard, we were intrigued by the shift in attitudes toward space in his lifetime. Considered the Father of Modern Rocketry, Goddard filed over two hundred patents for space vehicle technology. Goddard’s patent drawings contain many diagrams in the form of radially symmetrical mandalas. Like alchemical diagrams and the models of early astronomers, these drawings reveal coded secrets of the workings of space, time, and the forces of nature.

Mandalas occur throughout history in many cultures around the world, and often represent a symbolic ordering of the physical universe or the psychic universe within. Connected to the concept, “As above, so below”, the geometric imagery in mandalas makes connections and creates balance between the forces of nature. As such, mandalas have been used as symbols of spiritual devotion, and thought to have powers of transformation and healing.

In Goddard’s time, his patent drawings represented one of the great quests of humankind: to reach the heavens, gain power over the forces of the earth, and attain the benefits waiting to be discovered in the worlds beyond. Today, we consider the ramifications of that quest and the technological advances it manifested, advances that have the power to destroy the world even as we have freed ourselves from its boundaries. We consider these ramifications as we create these Goddard mandalas, made as devotions to his work and that of other pioneers in space travel, and made as a devotion to one of the other great quests of our species: to bring order out of chaos and find meaning in our relationship to the universe.

See more Goddard Mandalas in United Catalysts' Circle Sky.

View the Skywheel Project, inspired by a trip to the Robert H. Goddard Archives

See a sampling of Goddard’s original patent drawing mandalas.

Visit the Roswell Museum and Art Center site, home of the Robert H. Goddard Archives.

Find out more about Robert H. Goddard at NASA.gov.

The iron camera is a cast iron pinhole camera that we use to photograph the landscape and the processes of nature. While the function of modern cameras is to instantly capture a moment in time, the function of the Iron Camera is to slow down moments to reveal the processes and stories beneath the surface of the experience.

To create the camera, we first patterned the form in wax, then coated it in an industrial ceramic shell. After the wax form was burned away in a kiln, we cast the camera at Mesalands College Art Foundry in Tucumcari, New Mexico, by pouring molten iron into the space inside the shell. When cool, the ceramic shell was cracked open and the Iron Camera was born.

The earth is made of iron at its core, and we imagine that in a way, when we adventure with this camera, the Earth is revealing itself to itself.

Since 2001, we’ve traveled across the American Southwest with this beast, looking for the stories the Earth wants to tell. These are often about the processes of growth, decay, and regeneration, or about different perceptions of time, or the tension between human-built environments and the natural landscape.

In our adventures, we first scout ahead for areas of interest, then transport the heavy camera and tools to each location using specially-made backpacks. Once the camera is in place, an exacting and lengthy ritual is followed to create a photograph. Like camera setups of old, the exposure times are calculated using a light meter and slide rule, then timed with a stop watch. When the shutter is opened, a pinhole drilled through a copper lens plate enables light to fall onto a 4x5 in. negative, creating an image. The lack of a viewfinder on the camera creates a true collaboration between the instrument and the Earth, where our point of view is secondary.

The process time to take each photograph is considerable, allowing plenty of time for us to consider the stories behind the view, and record them in an exposure diary. After an exposure is made, we process the black and white negatives, sometimes in a portable darkroom in a bathroom or a closet, and then print them.

 Each resulting image is recorded and mapped, and we build a frame for each piece out of elements that relate to its location and subject. In exhibitions of our adventures, we display the camera, backpacks and tools along with the images, and include text, sound, video and collected artifacts to further reveal the stories behind the exposures.

To see the field note stories for each exposure, click the caption beneath the photo.

See Albuquerque Journal review.

See ABQ Arts review.

In Fall 2013, we spent two weeks living in Petrified Forest National Park as part of the Artists in Residence program. During our stay we explored the vast landscape and recorded visual stories with our cast iron pinhole camera. We developed the negatives using traditional darkroom processes, then hand colored the prints using a variety of media.

While working on in this exhibition we were inspired by the hand-tinted black and white postcards of the early 1900s, used to promote travel to distant destinations. These photographic images were often highly embellished, with the colors of the landscape exaggerated and additional features drawn in. The resulting images were surreal combinations of photography, drawing, painting and collage, depicting more of a visual memory of the mind’s eye than a realistic physical location.

We were also interested in the giving and receiving of postcards as a form of communication – still hand-written in this digital age. The three parts of a postcard record three distinct perspectives: the image, specifically chosen to capture a place of interest to the traveler, the caption on the back, providing an educational tidbit of information about the place for the receiver of the postcard, and the hand-written message, sharing the personal experience and feelings of the traveler. These parts as a whole are sent through the mail to be examined by a loved one so they may share in our experience of adventure. 

See framed painted desert images.

Read painted desert postcards.

See exhibit installation images.

See Petrified Forest National Park website.

See info on the Petrified Forest residency.

In August 2017, we spent two weeks in the Texas panhandle at the Oakes Creek Ranch artist residency. There we created an unexpected public art piece in the town of Clarendon, population 2,000. About 40 white PVC crosses were erected a while back around the town, and not everyone in town was excited about these strong symbols dominating the landscape.

After hearing complaints, backstories and embarrassed apologies from multiple residents of the town, we wondered what could be done for those citizens who wished to remove crosses from their property, but worried about the repercussions from the community. We came up with an idea of transforming crosses into God's Eyes, the diamond-shaped weaving pattern made around a cross that most kids practice making in summer Bible camp. Our residency host connected us with a property owner who housed a cross along the main road right as you entered the town, and we scheduled a conversion.

We used different colors of nylon rope to create the God's Eye at this larger scale, and we faced the eye toward the town to watch over it. We installed the cross during the light of day with a couple of helpers, and under the sideways glances of many curious townspeople as they went about their business.

The God's Eye form is both whimsical, with its bright colors and bold patterns, memories of childhood and hippie-style macramé -- and it is powerfully sincere: the mysterious, unfathomable Eye of God watching over everyone in Clarendon, Texas.

Inspired by the popular children’s matching game, we created The Memory Game as a set of archetypal memories, glimpses of experiences and relationships from all stages of life, from the mundane to the extraordinary, from birth to death. We used images from our own sets of memories and family histories, shown as pairs of projected images, randomly combined, to form imagined narratives that interact with the viewer’s own set of memories.

Like our own experience of memory, colored by filters of emotion and life context, these photographic images are colored by layers of skyscapes and landscapes, sometimes obscuring, sometimes highlighting the view. The projections were shown in a unique, double-walled tent, built as an insulated, sacred space for contemplating the nature of memory.

Our Memory Game has matching pairs just like the game we used to play as children, but like real memories, our pairs don’t match exactly. Memories shift and change as we reach for them again and again over time, and we wanted to capture that slippage visually. Something interesting also happens when we compare random images – we begin to look for associations, telling ourselves a story about the connections we find.

See more memory card images here.

Read an essay about the Memory Game by art historian Dana Doyle.

See game set and text poem.

The Purification Project was the first large-scale interactive project we created as United Catalysts. It began with a desire to help boost morale in the sculpture department on the campus of California State University, Long Beach. The new building construction in the art department was stalled, which left the sculpture department stuck in temporary quarters sharing a building on the other side of the campus with the ROTC. 

The stalled completion of the project was felt by everyone, and was affecting student and faculty enthusiasm and creativity. We got the idea that if we had a chance to reset people's attitudes toward the space, we could all move forward with more positivity.

We decided to build a purification machine and invite everyone involved to attend a ceremony of purifying the space. The cast iron contraption combined various elements used for cleansing by different cultures, and was, most impressively for the audience, a sage-burning smoke machine.

As we were building the machine, we realized that we needed to create a ritual for operating it, and create a way for audience members to participate and feel a transformation of their space. In the months preceding the performance, we interviewed art department faculty and staff, and  met with the Dean, construction contractors and the President of the College, inviting them all to participate in the transformation ceremony.

The purification went off without a hitch, and drew attention to the situation and the issues causing the general malaise, which helped create a sense of camaraderie and new energy in the art department. In this way, the purification machine affected a change to the space it purified.

It changed us too, as we learned much from this first project, especially about the construction of ritual, the power of transformation, and about ourselves and our role as artists in society.

Since that first time, we have built a number of Purification Machines, and brought people together in creative ways to reset ourselves and the energy around us. These adventures have influenced all our other work.

Many residents and visitors of desert cities like Las Vegas don’t have the time or inclination to go past the city limits into the desert beyond. It is common for people to believe that the desert is a place of desolation, devoid of life, color and beauty, when in fact the landscape nearby contains a rich palette of colors and texture and a vast array of life.

We wanted to bring this desert tapestry into the gallery, showing the plants formally like a painting against the white walls. A daily mist of water approximated the scent of the desert in the rain. Plants from the East Mojave was made as part of the installation Explorations with the Iron Camera, exhibited in Las Vegas in 2005.

Target practice can be a joyful focus of intention. We make our own targets based on traditional design motifs, and inspired by events in our lives.

Some of the imagery in the targets is of objects that are common and fun to shoot, like booze bottles. The animals depicted are all tricksters, showing us their power, ready to share it if we can catch them. The frosty glass of beer and alarm clock targets came from a period of time when we were working too hard, and needed to focus on finding time to relax.

In the spring of 2004, we began Planting Circle/Growth Ring in the art department of the University of Nevada Las Vegas. A site-specific ritual in two parts, it was intended to provide a focus for hope and growth for students and faculty in what was, at least on the surface, a fairly cynical community.

In the first stage, Planting Circle, people were invited to think of something that they wanted to grow within themselves or their lives. They would write this down on a piece of paper, burn it, and mix the ashes with earth, pigment and seeds. They would then assemble these into a seed pouch, which they would attach to the circle. Throughout the week, as more pouches were attached, they could see they were not alone in their community in seeking positive change.

When people arrived the next Monday morning, the circle had been removed, and the Growth Ring had been planted in its place. Staked around the space flew a string of flags sewn together from the individual pouches, now stained subtle colors from the pigmented earth and water, testifying to the hope that was planted there.

Over the next couple of weeks, participants practiced patience and faith that their seeds would sprout in the harsh Las Vegas spring. Some expressed fear that nothing could grow in the desert climate. As the seedlings emerged, participants began to water the plants and tend the soil on their own initiative, and many expressed their joy at the connection between watching the plants grow and tending to their own internal garden.

That spring, the plants thrived in a climate of nurturing and care, and some four o'clock plants still come up every year as a reminder of what we planted together.

Essay by Dr. Louisa McDonald

It began as a flurry of lures in mid-October. Small leaflets announcing 100 Messages Sent By a Crow, appeared one day scattered on hallway walls and clustered on the interior doors or the University of Nevada Art Department. Printed on heavy, sand-colored Canson drawing paper in rich, black ink, they had a retro, hand-lettered look and featured delicate drawings of either a weathervane pointing south-east, a partially stripped ear of corn, a country ham, or a short branch cut from a leafy tree, symbols of treasures such as a crow might fancy: seeds, wind and sky, or that a hungry, weary, dreaming man might long for: sustenance and home.

The next week these were replaced by longer, narrower, cartouche-like leaflets printed on the same sand-colored paper which announced:

United Catalysts
Present for your Benefit
100 Messages Sent By a Crow
Grant Hall Gallery
9AM to 5PM, Monday
October 31 only!

Playfully evocative and theatrical with their hint of spectacle, like circus handbills from an earlier century, they immediately raised one’s spirits and expectations. Coming soon, they seemed to promise, is an opportunity to step out of the ordinary, possibly even to change your life.

The now familiar, delicately drawn emblems of the elements: the ham, the ear of corn, the weathervane, the leafy branch, were joined b the image of The Crow herself. Far from the Old World crow, who is the harbinger of evil, a symbol of ill omen, the bearer of bad news, this crow seems kin to the indigenous hero/trickster of the Americas, - a jaunty figure in a top hat and long skirt from whose outstretched wings long feathers hung, and beneath whose feet printed in hand-lettered all capitals was this remarkable message:

You can communicate
With the Other Realm
Ask Questions/Leave Comments.
Send messages to the beyond.
Honor your Ancestors and those who have passed on.
Send Love to Lost Friends and Relations.
To Persons Obscure, Famous or Infamous.
To those you know and those you don’t.
To Spirits near and far.Bring your message
(on a small scrap of paper)
To the Grant Hall Gallery
9AM to 5PM Monday, October 31 only!

Monday, October 31, arrived. On one hand, just another ordinary day; on the other hand, Halloween, the Christian Eve of all Hallows, the pagan feast of Samhain, the day when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest and most transparent and the Dead return to the land of the living. A day of witches, goblins, spirits and ghosts, shadowy night animals, bats, ravens, spiders, skeletons and jack ‘o lanterns, trick or treat –a good time to communicate with the spirit world; a good time for introspective Shamanistic journeys and personal vision quests. The Crow had arrived.

She was no fiction or figment of the imagination, but solidly present and gloriously real. Tall and stately, dressed in black. Beneath the top hat round, intelligent eyes peered over an enormous, sharp, blue-black beak. From the shoulders and sleeves of her closely fitted jacket dangled long, solitary feathers; two small, beaded and jeweled purses hung around her waist and jingling bells, benevolent warnings, were sewn onto her long skirt. Thus she worked, intensely focused all day, delivering messages from one spirit to another; she spun, her feathered wings and belled skirts flying; she rested, leaning her sleek black figure into the thick cushion of bushes as if into a crow’s nest. As soon as I caught a glimpse of her I knew I had to send a message.

Read more of Louisa McDonald's essay.

See the crow message fetish sculptures.

In October 2007, the largest fire in California history swept through parts of Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. Thousands of residents were evacuated and some lost their homes. Many more saw the fires from a distance, breathed in the smoke and heard non-stop news of the fires on TV and radio, but did not see any physical evidence of the fires on the landscape and in their communities.

In the Santiago Fire Plant Project, we gave viewers the opportunity to confront the effects of the fire on the landscape up close. Working with three different local entities affected by the fire, the Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary in Modjeska Canyon, The Orange County Public Works dept. and the Trabuco Canyon Ramakrishna Monastery, we gathered native plant samples from crucial plant and animal communities affected by the fire. These included the Coastal Sage Scrub Community, Riparian Woodland and the Chaparral Community.

In January 2008, a few months after the fires, we created a wall sculpture out of the plants we had gathered. We included plants from many areas affected by the fire, some charred, some semi-burned and others untouched. To us, they represented the effects of the fire: on communities of plants, animals and humans, and on the land itself. Above all, we wished to highlight the role of fire as a destructive force in part of a larger cycle of nature.

 Doyle Arts Pavilion, 2008

Bicycle Fortune Wheel is a carnival-style fortune-telling machine created out of parts from impounded bicycles as part of the SPIN! Public Art Project. Cranking the pedal spins the wheel and rings a series of bells. The wheel comes to rest and the device points to one of a series of paintings that can then be interpreted by the viewer as their fortune for the day. Some of the fortune symbols were made especially for the city of Long Beach, such as the open parking space, Queen Mary sinking, and frothy mug of beer, and some are archetypal symbols we use in our other projects, such as the Bicycle Acrobat or Dancing Bug Woman. The public sculpture is now in front of Heights Chiropractic and Health Center, and can be visited at 1111 4th St. in Long Beach.

See Fortune Interpretations.

About the SPIN! Public Art Project:

From February 18 - 25, 2007 the world's top professional bicyclists competed over 8 days in the AMGEN tour of California bike race. This 700-mile race took competitors through several California coastal cities, starting in Sausalito and ending Long Beach. To celebrate the City of Long Beach presented SPIN, a public art piece that embraces the world of cycling. The Arts Council for Long Beach (ACLB) in collaboration with the City of Long Beach Redevelopment Agency commissioned 30 artists and artists teams to create exceptional sculptures for SPIN, using bikes for from the Long Beach police property yard. The artworks were on display along the course route through Long Beach, which ran along Shoreline Drive, up Alamitos Avenue, and down Ocean Blvd. to Redondo Avenue. After the race, the sculptures were sold to collectors at auction, to raise money for more public art projects.

Combining elements of alchemy and shamanism with a child-like sense of investigation, in Mysteries of the Sky World displayed curiosities from the physical and mythical upper realm. The sky is a place of soul travel, the home of ancestors and spirit guides, and the domain of romantic memories, fleeting dreams, and glimpses of the future.

A series of spirit vessels, such as a motorcycle ship, a tow-truck plane, and a winged parade-rifle, to name a few, were constructed from wood, glass, bone, paper and iron.  The highlight of these was the Zeppelin, a twelve foot long illuminated wood and cloth vessel, displayed with full-scale schematic drawings, work bench, notes, and tools.

Other works in the show include a series of layered transparent drawings paired with passages from historical texts, and a giant 25 foot long book of drawings, diagrams, stories and poetry that elaborate upon the phenomena of the world of the sky.