We are building a giant pop-up book out of steel for Burning Man 2026.
Glass House Arts, founded by MJ Brovold and Colin Jemmott, creates large-scale, interactive, and playful public art. Our work blends geometry, engineering, and whimsy to craft installations that invite exploration and foster connection.
But finished pieces are secondary to human connection. Our Escondido workshop has become a community hub where 300+ people have learned to weld, build, and create the extraordinary together.
We build large-scale public sculpture in steel and aluminum. The phrase we keep coming back to is "almost a joke, fully realized." The "almost a joke" part is permission. Art can be silly, mathy, a little absurd, and still matter. The "fully realized" part is the harder half. Lots of artists have a notebook of ideas. The work has to actually exist in the world, at full scale, lit, anchored, and built to survive weather and crowds. Shipping is the discipline.
Most of our pieces start with geometry. Tensegrity structures that look like they're floating. A 30-foot stellated dodecahedron you can stand under and look up through. A faceted Corten rabbit. A dodecahedron made entirely of right angles that you don't notice is a dodecahedron until you walk around it. We like math that hides in plain sight, and we like industrial materials doing something unexpectedly warm or playful.
Some of the work is participatory by design. Echoes of a Dying Sea is a steel sound installation at the Salton Sea, and the real piece is the act of talking to the sea through it. Other pieces are static but reward a second look. A glance from across the plaza, then a closer look that finds the symmetry, then a hand on a hub to figure out how it was built.
The community piece is not separate from the art. Glass House Arts is a working studio in our Escondido home, and the builds are how people learn. Over 300 contributors have welded, ground, plasma cut, and assembled alongside us over the last decade. The studio is the medium too.