After sculptor breaks hand, art community comes together to help finish 20-foot Burning Man piece

When Zulu Heru dreams, he dreams big. 

“Approximately 23 feet tall and upwards of 9,000 pounds.”

Heru is describing “Farmer The Rigger,” a statue destined for Burning Man that he has been working on for the better part of a year. 

Heru, originally from Richmond, Virginia, and now living in Oakland, spent nine years in the U.S. Army before realizing that sculpting is the career for him. Being able to display a piece at Burning Man is a dream come true for Heru. “Farmer The Rigger” has been both a labor of love and just a whole lot of labor. 

“I have given it my all to produce this work of art,” Heru said. “I have been here working 12-16 hours a day since the beginning of April. I left my job. I left my home. I uprooted my life to make this sculpture.”

But then, just two weeks before a transport was scheduled to come to the Petaluma warehouse where Zulu had been working on the piece and pick it up, Heru suffered a twist of fate. Or, more accurately, the twist of a drill.

“The drill I was using didn't have a clutch and it spun out of control. And it took my hand with it. And basically just crunched the bones in my hand like a bag of chips,” Heru said.

“Farmer The Rigger” depicts an African mask suspended by large chains and anchored by two large hands. The injury left Heru with just one working hand and a deadline that seemed now impossible to meet. 

“Two days ago, I sat my team down and I said, 'I don't want to put too much pressure on you. You know, I don't want you to have to make the sacrifices,’” Heru said.

Yahweh Chevalier was on the original crew and didn’t want Heru’s injury to keep his sculpture from being finished in time. Someway, somehow "Farmer the Rigger" was going to make it to Burning Man even if that meant working harder than he already was. 

“I knew that, you know, we were going to somehow make it come together across the finish line,” Chevalier said. 

But that wasn’t going to be enough. 

It wasn’t until word spread amongst the greater Bay Area art community that random artists with no connection to Zulu began stopping by and offering their two good hands to the mix.

"Without the support from the community, without all the shares, the likes, the volunteers, everything, it's no way that this sculpture could make it to Burning Man," Heru said.

"That's been such a beautiful part of the past week,” said Jessi Eberlin, another member of Heru’s crew. “I hope that he takes that and harnesses it for inspiration for a lifetime."

With all the extra help, it appears the sculpture will indeed be ready to go when the transport arrives.

Heru’s initial hope for “Farmer the Rigger” is that it would bring a much-needed dose of diversity and inclusion to Burning Man. It now brings with it another message, one about the power of community and kindness.

“When we work together, we can do anything, it doesn't matter what it is,” Heru said. “I feel like that's super, super embedded in Burning Man culture as well – just radical participation and people working together in sometimes odd and strange conditions.”

For those looking to help support Zulu's work (and aren't artists themselves) his crew has set up a GoFundMe to get "Farmer The Rigger" across the finish line.