Team

None of this would be possible without the incredible dedication of the following people.

Board of Celestialites

Camp Co-Lead Ryan Lely

Camp Co-Lead Lance Ossman

Accelerant Lead Andrew Barrett

Engineering Lead Dan Benge

Accelerant Support Keith Yoder

Creative Lead Steve Green

Creative Lead Ken Montgomary

Technology Support Gustav Andersson

Technology Admin Jeffrey Oliver

VR Creative Lead Lance Ossman

World Builder Sean Guadron

3D Modeler Colleen Cassidy

Graphic Designer Alexis Stern

VR Community Liaison Ken Montgomery

Social Media Manager Janet Jaimes

Analytics Jennifer Brown

DJ Illuminatty

VR DJ, VR SCULPTOR, WORLD BUILDER, NEW MEDIA EXPERT

Natasha Murray (aka Illuminatty) is a VR DJ who is known for her shows in Altspace VR, Wave XR, Sansar, Neos, Twitch, and Mixer. She has been spinning with Tribe XR for just over a year, remotely bringing an eclectic mix of tech house and breaks to real-life venues around the world. She is currently a resident DJ for VirtualSports, an entertainment center located near Seattle, about 800 miles away from her home in Oakland, CA. Also known for her artwork, she is a featured Oculus Medium artist, and appeared in their global sculpting battle, Road To Tokyo, Episode 2. With a love of blending art and music, she designs her own stages for her resident performances at Wave XR, often using storytelling to embellish her designs and DJ sets.

Crimson Rose

Crimson Rose, Burning Man’s original fire art dancer, began participating in Burning Man in 1991. Crimson leads the development of the organization’s Art Department, which grants more than $1.4million to artists annually, and is a founding board member of the Black Rock Arts Foundation. Crimson currently serves as Secretary to the Burning Man Project Board of Directors and as a public speaker nationally and internationally as an ambassador for the ethos and creativity that fuel Burning Man. With Crimson’s support and guidance, Burning Man serves as an inspirational limitless canvas, the works of which now find public placement in cities around the world, serving as catalytic sparks for community collaboration.

DJ Puddles & The Space Unicorn

The Fairy of Trance & her beloved Space Unicorn! Puddles has been spinning Trance & PsyTrance in various clubs in SL every week for over 5 years.  From the UK, it is suspected by some that the Unicorn is actually the brains of the duo, doing all the work while Puddles is just an airhead Fairy looking pretty on it’s back! – We couldn’t possibly comment. Join DJ Puddles LIVE at; Fridays – 2pm (SLT) @ The Ministry of Trance. Puddles also regularly spins at: The Buddha, The PsyCircle and Burn 2.0 The Virtual Burning Man Festival in Second Life. You may be lucky to also catch DJ Puddles doing legendary Rave gigs in Sansar.

DJ L.O.U.

Over the past 5 years L.O.U has been paving her way through Australia’s music scene as a well-respected DJ / Producer with an ever-evolving sound. L.O.U has graced some of Sydney’s biggest Events and festivals including Ministry of Sound, Return to Rio, and Electric Gardens as well as playing international gigs at Your Paradise Fiji and Singlefin Bali. Warming up for some of the industries biggest names in the electronic music scene she has really started to evolve into a regular name now billed to headline some of Sydney’s biggest parties and holds regular residencies with some of Sydney’s finest collectives. L.O.U has been recognised as a truly passionate artist with a huge love for the music industry. Devout to the House / Tech house sound she has really made a mark with her uplifting signature sets that are always upbeat, you can feel the energy she radiates through her careful selection of music during any show she is billed on.

2017 saw the release of her debut EP “Drifted” signed to house music powerhouse Double-up Records that has won herself a plethora of DJ support around the Globe and debuted at #34 on the Aria charts. L.O.U followed up with a huge release ‘‘Addiction’, she carefully layers her distinct driving tech style with the ethereal tones of vocalist The Baroness to create an alluring warehouse-filling sound. A follow up E.P is well underway and will be hitting all major platforms soon early 2021

Adriana Roberts (Bootie Mashup, Piss Clear/BRC Weekly)

Not only has Adriana Roberts been going to Burning Man longer than nearly all the people who run it, but she’s been publishing an independent newspaper there for nearly as long, having launched the legendary Piss Clear — now called the BRC Weekly — in 1995, two years after her first Burn in 1993. She is also the “Queen Mother” of Bootie Mashup, the international music and nightlife brand infamous for championing the art form of the bootleg mashup. 

Pre-pandemic, she DJed and hosted pop mashup parties in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Black Rock City, Berlin, and other cities, for 17 years. But now, in the age of Covid, she has pivoted to running a successful Twitch channel, live streaming mashups to a global audience. As someone who likes to “do it all,” she’s also the lead singer of Bootie Mashup’s house band, Smash-Up Derby, in addition to performing burlesque, often as the only transgender performer on the bill.

Marco Cochrane (Bliss Dance 2010, Truth is Beauty 2013, R-Evolution 2015)

Marco Cochrane was born to American artists in Venice, Italy in 1962 and raised in Northern California in the midst of the political and cultural movement of those times. As a result, Marco learned respect for oneness, balance and the imperative to make the world a better place. In particular, he identified with the female struggle with oppression and saw feminine energy and power as critical to the world’s balance. In his 20s, on a dare, he explored sculpting and discovered both his ability to capture human emotion and energy and the power of art to amplify.

Self-taught, for more than 20 years Marco sculpted in clay and cast in bronze, primarily women who chose their own poses, their own expressions.  In 2007 he attended the Burning Man Festival and was inspired to take his art and his message in a new direction, he just did not yet know how.  In 2009 he returned, and it was then he realized how he could enlarge his sculptures to monumental proportions while maintaining their integrity, thus magnifying their impact.

Marco believes that the time we have to solve the problems that threaten our existence on this planet is running out, and that the key to finding real lasting solutions is bringing feminine energy into balance with male energy: a global shift, already underway.

DJ Celeste

A great DJ understands that it is their duty to not just help their fans have an epic party, but to spend their entire lives dedicated to being able to take their listeners on an irresistibly exciting and inspirational, next level sonic and visual journey. 

DJ Celeste’s unshakable love for music, art and performance has led her to spend nearly two decades dedicated to studying the art and science of DJing, music production and music theory with an impressive set of career highlights including, 13+ years as a special event, festival & nightclub DJ, providing sound equipment for & DJ/MCing over 600+ events, acquiring over $25k worth of sound, lighting and DJ equipment, meticulously collecting and cataloging over 23,000 songs in almost all genres, developing a knack for climactic, seamless song mixing, eclectic and inspirational curation and reading a diverse crowd, releasing 5 solo albums and amassing millions of plays of her original music on Spotify, Pandora, etc., Celeste possesses a never ending enthusiasm for providing a top notch experience for her listeners and can say that she is proud to help represent today’s modern, driven female in the entertainment industry. 

As a Virtual Reality Artist, Celeste is a triple threat, DJ, event producer and 3D visual artist. She has been tapping the current, most cutting edge technology for design and performance to be able to create exciting, fully immersive performance environments. Truly the future of entertainment, where DJs not only play the music, but also conceptualize and design their own festival type stages and visuals and show up as avatars to perform. She has logged thousands of hours designing 3D modeled art, stages and visual effects for various VR platforms including AltSpaceVR, Sansar, TribeXR and WaveXR.

Dominic Tinio

Dominic Tinio aka the Dark Angel of Black Rock (D.A.) is the Environmental Restoration Manager for Burning Man Project, founder of Playa Restoration (Resto), and creator of the MOOP Map. Burning since 1997, D.A. has been making BRC disappear post-event, leaving the playa clean and without a trace for 20 years. With BRC’s cancellation in 2020, D.A. walked 85-miles to the Black Rock Desert along Highway 447, cleaning up Matter Out of Place along the way while raising funds and awareness for Burning Man’s Project’s 2030 Sustainability Roadmap. D.A.’s Black Rock MOOPATHON cleaned up over 2000 lbs of MOOP and raised $31,000 towards Sustainability – namely, making the Burning Man Pavillion run on solar power. D.A. believes that on the Road to Sustainability, Leaving No Trace is just the beginning.

Katie Sloan – Director, Customer Programs & Services, Southern California Edison (SCE)

Katie Sloan is currently leading SCE’s advanced energy solutions for its 15 million customers, including customer solar, battery storage, energy efficiency and demand response programs with annual budget of $500 million.

Katie was previously responsible for developing from the ground up SCE’s vehicle and building electrification programs, with an approved budget of over $1 billion over 6 years, including the largest light duty & medium & heavy-duty electric vehicle utility infrastructure programs in the United States. The team’s mission is to help California get 7 million EVs on the road and convert one-third of space and water heating in buildings by 2030 and is the first and largest team of its kind at a utility in the nation.

For the majority of 2020 Katie held a temporary assignment working on the company’s customer care response to COVID-19 and associated oversight of impacts on the company’s cash flow due to the pandemic & economic downfall. During this time SCE stopped turning off customer’s power for non-payment and provided additional financial assistance.

Previously, Katie held roles of increasing responsibility at SCE & Edison International focusing on clean energy policy, strategy, operations, and analysis. She has also worked at First Solar, a large solar panel manufacturer, developing global public policy.

Katie was named a Woman of Achievement by the San Gabriel Valley YWCA her work at SCE and non-profits. Katie currently serves as board chair of CALSTART, with the mission to build a high-tech clean-transportation industry that creates jobs, cuts air pollution and oil imports and curbs climate change. She also serves on the board of Beyond the Block, a non-profit focused on expanding global awareness and increasing intellectual curiosity of at-risk youth.

Katie holds a master’s degree in regulatory economics and bachelor’s degree in business administration from New Mexico State University.

DJ Maxxxyt

DJ Maxxxyt

It’s Funky Boogie Disco that moves this funky soul and DJ Maxxxyt is going to play it at small bars, pubs, parties or on the radio. This funky Australian plays a unique mix of Discoteque Eclectique for your listening pleasure. Musical journey’s include Soul, Funk, Disco, Boogie, Afro jazz funk beats, and boogie funkin disco from all over the globe. Music in all forms will move you and he hopes it does the same to you while your shakin your rump.

Ellie Tumbuan

Ellie Tumbuan (Head of Strategy and Culture, The Justice Collective)

Ellie is the eldest, multiracial, queer daughter of an Indonesian American immigrant from Manado, Sulawesi Utara and a badass Viking, Jewish buleh mom from Minnesota, occupied land of the Anishinabewaki, Mdewakanton, and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples. She grew up in immigrant-shaped Brown and Black neighborhoods of Southern California and early on, saw the problems that would later lead her to her purpose. Though she spent much of her career doing social impact work, her political education and radicalism was a slow birth, and happened only through deep and intimate community building, organizing, and her own identity reckoning – and yes, communal effort. 

In spite of, or perhaps due to surviving many things, she became an entrepreneur and is a proud owner and principal of the Black-Founded, WOC-owned consulting firm, The Justice Collective, where she serves as Head of Strategy and Culture to bring racial equity to the workplace so people can transform the world while they transform their hearts. It’s a journey.

In between a few credentials, some meaningful recognition, and failures of every kind, Ellie discovered she feels most effective when helping leaders and changemakers feel their best, trusting their talents and wisdom. She’s good at building people up and helping them see their truth more clearly. 

Her favorite things are collective liberation, her fiance and rescue dog, shoulder pads, sambal, and putting a fried egg on everything.

Athena Demos

Athena Demos (Co-founder BRCvr)

Athena Demos is a successful producer and creative manager with over 20+ years of experience in the entertainment industry as a leading producer of iconic global events and now virtually too. Athena was one of the founding members of the Los Angeles Burning Man Decompression Arts and Music Celebration in 2002. An event in downtown LA which started with 800 people and grew to 8000 people quickly by 2012. She continued to produce that event till 2016. In 2009 Athena became the official Burning Man Regional contact for Los Angeles. She founded the LA League of Arts (501c3) for the LA Burning Man community in 2011. She has nurtured the Los Angeles Burning Man community for over 15 years producing newbie orientations, film festivals, local burns, and civic projects with local schools. She continues to foster community and facilitate the creative process globally as a founder and producer of BRCvr. Athena has a passion for travel and started living nomadically in 2019. She learns about cultures and shares her experiences on Instagram. You can follow her adventures on her Instagram account.

Nino Alicea

Puerto Rican artist NiNo was introduced to the world of arts at an early age when his parents noticed how much he enjoyed drawing and painting. When he attended college at the University of Puerto Rico, he joined the National Student Exchange Program which transferred him to Indiana University where he majored in Graphic Design. 

NiNo’s experience as an artist has since been very eclectic. It has brought him to designing sets and shows for stage, film, and commercials in Los Angeles. He was part of the design team for NBC’s TV show “American Dream Builders” and has been working as the Art Director/Prop Master for Ricky Martin since 2017.

NiNo’s favorite projects have been creations that bring communities together, notably the public art project, “Múcaro’s Rising”, a basketball court mural located in Puerto Rico. It was the first of its kind on the island sponsored by the 2K Foundation. The project also served as an outreach program to involve the community to paint and refurbish the court, an experience NiNo was proud to lead. Múcaro’s Rising was recognized with a CODAward as one of the 2021 Top 100 commissioned art installations in the world. 

Other public art projects NiNo designed and created are “Got Framed”, a popular interactive art installation at Burning Man (2015 & 2016), recognizing him as the first Puerto Rican to bring art to Burning Man, and the wise woody owl named “MÚCARO” which received the 2017 Burning Man Honoraria Art Grant. He recently received his second Honoraria Art Grant to bring a new interactive art piece “ATABEY” to the 2022 event.

NiNo owes a lot of his big art fabrication and installation experience to his years working at one of the best U.S. art fabrication houses, Carlson Baker Arts. He has had the opportunity to collaborate with renowned artists such as Christian Moeller (“Cactus” at the Henry B. González Convention Center, San Antonio Texas) and Pae White (“Woven Walk” at the LAX, Los Angeles Tom Bradley International Airport).

In 2021 he joined forces with his talented friend Thomas Dambo, fabricating five of his world-renowned troll installations at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine called in “Guardians Of The Seeds”.

What fulfills NiNo the most is creating spaces that provoke thought and conversation. He loves seeing people being stimulated, and better yet, inspired to create, thrive and dream BIG.

Rachel Hundley

Rachel Hundley “retired” from a career as a corporate litigation attorney in New York City to move to California and open a fried chicken business. The goal was to put down roots in smaller city where she could be more involved in the community, and a year later Rachel found herself buying a food truck and running for the Sonoma City Council. She surprised everyone, including herself, when she won that election and became Sonoma’s first elected millennial.

Rachel served as the Mayor of Sonoma in 2017 when unprecedented wildfires swept across the North Bay. Her growing passion for local government inspired her to close her five-year-old fried chicken business, reinvent herself as a public law attorney specializing in municipalities and special districts, and run for a second term on the city council in 2018.

Rachel’s reelection campaign took an unexpected turn when she received an anonymous email stating she should reconsider her second run or else she would be “exposed.” The email included a link to a new website about her. Although this was not Rachel’s first run-in with a malicious website, this one added a new angle. Using photos of Rachel from Burning Man, the website stated she was too “immoral” and “unethical” to continue leading the city. Rachel’s response—a four-minute video posted to YouTube entitled “Sonoma Councilwoman Says No to Slut-Shaming”—went viral, and her story was reported across the country and around the world in national and international news media. Rachel won her reelection with the most votes in the history of that race. She currently serves as Vice Mayor.

Rachel is a native of the Deep South where she earned three undergraduate degrees from the University of Georgia and a law degree from the University of North Carolina. She currently services as General Counsel to four special districts in the Bay Area. Rachel also serves on a number of boards, including serving as chair of the Sonoma County Mayors & Council Members Legislative Committee. In her free time, Rachel paints birds and portraits of her two pets, Dr. Frasier Crane (kitten) and Sam Seaborn (dog). She is married to Sean Hamlin, who proposed during public comment at a City Council meeting in 2017.​

Stuart Mangrum
Michael Garlington is a photographer, master printer and sculptor. He is the son of a journalist and a photographer. Raised in Petaluma, California, he was influenced early on by the mix of hippies, poultry and dairy farmers, metal fabricators, bleeding hearts, artists and transients surrounding him. At 17, he began working with his mother and step father at their photographic lab in San Francisco, Spindler Photographic. Working at Spindler Photographic was a turning point in Michael’s life. He gained and mastered his skills at black and white film development and printing. The best photographers in the Bay Area at the time were clientele of Spindle Photographic and this exposure informed his composition and developed his dark room talent. By age 21, Garlington embarked on his own artistic mission, photographing the world around him, but more interestingly creating new worlds for his portraits to exist in. By building backdrops and sculptural elements to photograph he created what he calls photosculptures. His work captures luminous, yet often stark imagery encompassing the spectrum of human emotion and experience. The question became what to do with all these images. In 2000, at the age of 23, Garlington embarked on PhotoCar across the US and Europe. He and artists of various backgrounds traveled in a car covered with his photos. The car initiated interactions with those they encountered along the way. On his trips across the US he thrives on capturing his version of the Americana. Since 2004, Garlington has been featured in PhotoNY, PhotoLA, and PhotoSF. In 2005 a collection of his portraiture was published under the title, “Portraits from the Belly of the Whale.” He has been exhibited in solo and group shows around the world. In 2009, his work was the target of an art heist in Connecticut. More recently, Garlington has been sought out for his installations. Similar to the sculptures he creates for his photos, Garlington has moved towards creating longer lasting sculptures and art installations which can be experienced by viewers. In 2010, Garlington was sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts and the Andy Warhol Visual Arts Foundation to create, “PHOTOHOUSE” for SF Camerawork. For Burning Man, Michael Garlington has been selected as part of their Honorarium Collection three times. The first was in 2012 with a 20’ x 60’ x 4’ sculpture spelling out the word EGO. Each letter was comprised of intricately assembled hand poured plaster relics. In 2013, Garlington designed and built PhotoChapel, a gothic style chapel covered with black and white portraiture. The intricately gilded interior had plaster elements utilized in EGO, as well as an altar, confessional, and catacombs. PhotoChapel was 8 feet wide by twenty feet long and had a forty foot tall steeple. In 2014, Garlington brought Totem of Confessions to Burning Man. It is his largest project to date, with a thirty foot by thirty foot base and towering sixty feet overhead. The exterior was covered once again with Garlington’s portraiture, with animals, succulents, flowers, and shells surrounding photos making each cell a miniature diorama. Within the Totem, there was a gilded confessional, colored murals reaching to the peak of a stained glass steeple bathing the interior with lush colored light. All sculptures created for Burning Man were burned in spectacular fiery deaths, yet live on in the many photos and memories of those who were there to experience them. Looking towards the future, Garlington is collaborating with partner Natalia Bertotti. They have been working on projects together since 2013. Both inspire, learn and grow from each other’s talents making art and in their adventures together. Their ambitions are set on creating permanent installations. Incorporating photography into the sculptures is a consistent theme. It becomes the most elaborate frame a photo could hope for. The detail and multiples levels within their work is their staple. The frame is a sculpture housing the photo-sculptural portrait laced with emotion that lies within the subject. With so many details to discover the viewer can see the same image or sculpture so many times and yet consistently uncover something new. The next stage is towards permanent installations. Garlington and Bertotti have completed their first, a ceramic fountain at a private residence in their hometown of Petaluma. Currently they are working on museum installations as part of groups shows showcasing the Art of Burning Man. The first is at the Hermitage Museum and Gardens in Norfolk and they are in talks with the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC for an installation in early 2018. They also look forward to returning to Burning Man with a large scale installation, The Chapel of Babel, yet the installation date is still to be determined.

Stuart Mangrum
Stuart has been part of the Burning Man Stuart has been part of the Burning Man community since 1993, and has served in a number of leadership roles for Burning Man Project. As Communications Manager, he produced the event’s onsite newspaper, radio station, web properties, and its first live webcast. As Education Director, he led the development of Burning Man’s leadership curriculum and the creation of active learning environments, both online and event-based. As Director of the Philosophical Center, he manages storytelling projects in multiple media including film, audio, and print. He has written or co-written eight of the annual event themes for Black Rock City, including the 2020 theme, The Multiverse. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, he holds a degree in Government from the University of Maryland.

DJ Nate
One of Sydney’s newest DJ’s to the scene, DJ Nate (Nathan Morris) got his first start via the 2017 Halloween Whores fresh blood competition. Nate then went on to win the bedroom DJ comp at the Royal Oak in Double Bay.

From these competitions, Nate has gone on to play at some of the legendary Dan Murphy’s parties such as Go Out, FAB and I Remember House (IRH) in Melbourne. 2018 was really the breakout year for Nate, playing at major events with Daywash and 4the.Love in Sydney and RockCity in Melbourne. Capping off a great year with an invitation to play the main-stage at Halloween Whores.

In 2019 Nate continued to be booked in both Sydney and Melbourne and in August, played several gigs at Burning Man, his set at Bubbles & Bass being a highlight. He returned to the main stage of Halloween Whores to a sold out crowd and played his first gig at ARQ. Nate‘s last major gig prior to COVID, was opening for Dua Lipa at this February at 2020’s Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.