Above and Below concept. Image by Amanda Denz.
Meet the artist behind what may be Burning Man's most talked-about installation of 2026: Sean Orlando. This Burning Man Honoraria project, Above & Below, rises 40 feet into the sky, featuring a small house perched atop a towering beanstalk that connects two imaginative worlds. Equal parts fairy tale and engineering marvel, the sculpture embodies this year's Burning Man theme, Axis Mundi, while drawing inspiration from Orlando's own experiences as an artist and father.
The Origins of Above & Below and the Deep Personal Meaning Behind It
Above & Below will be built in less than four months by a team of more than 130 artists, fabricators, designers, volunteers and engineers.
“The Above & Below concept is very personal to me. It's a 40-foot tall beanstalk with a miniature house perched at the top, totalling 50-feet overall, all constructed out of steel and wood, found objects, recycled materials. The idea is steeped in story and narrative and fairytale."
Orlando doesn't want to hand visitors a neatly packaged meaning, he wants them to step inside Above & Below and discover their own meaning. What would your ideal world look like if you could build it from the ground up? What dreams would you go after if you built a space designed not just for survival, but for your imagination? Perched above the world below, it asks us: What kind of world are we building for future generations?
"I wanted to create a piece people would resonate with and contribute to building a story around. I don’t have the full story fleshed out and defined, which is intentional because I want this to be a collaborative art project where each person who interacts with it is able to contribute to that story with their own narrative. I want people to step into the space and experience it imaginatively and make their own interpretations.
For Orlando, the sculpture is a kind of self-portrait, "Above & Below is my version of a self-portrait of myself and the life I’m building with my daughter. It’s a life of supporting the arts and the creative arts community, a way of living that’s filled with creativity and innovation. The beanstalk is a place where an inventor lives with his daughter and he wants to create a safe place for her to exist in."
When I asked him how he wanted people to feel when they were interacting with the piece, Orlando said, “The idea with Above & Below is to challenge people to imagine how they would construct a life for themselves from scratch if they had the opportunity to do that. How do we imagine a better life? How do we build it in our world?"
As the daughter of an artist myself, this part of Orlando's story resonated deeply with me. The art piece is asking us not only how do we build things within our own world but how do we build things for those we care about so that they can thrive and grow as individuals? Growing up surrounded by creativity shaped the way I see the world, making me more curious, resourceful, and imaginative. Listening to Orlando describe the world he's building for his daughter, I couldn't help but recognize many of the same gifts that come from being raised by someone who chooses creativity as a profession.
Sean and his daughter.
Who is the Artist Behind Above & Below, Sean Orlando?
Sean Orlando is a sculptor and fabricator who combines engineering, storytelling, and interactive design into an unforgettable piece of art and experience. Over the years, he has contributed everything from large-scale interactive installations to fantastical art cars, including giant submarines, dragons, squid, a dragonfly, and most recently a sea otter that cruised the playa. Orlando speaking about his history building art for Burning Man:
"I started out doing large-scale installations at Burning Man and that led to a career building public art and site-specific work. Since 2010, I’ve been building art cars for Burning Man, probably 12 or so, and that’s the majority of the work that I’ve been doing recently for Burning Man. My team at Engineered Artworks has built massive fantastical mobile sculptures, submarines, squid, saloons, dragons. Two years ago we built a dragonfly and last year we built a giant sea otter.”
"However, it’s been 11 years since I worked on a large-scale sculpture Honoraria piece for Burning Man."
Orlando’s ideas come from history, folklore, and the stories that have shaped us and uses art as a way to imagine new possibilities for the future, “Many of the concepts that I’ve been drawn to over the years have roots in our past histories, our stories, and the idea of storytelling. I want Above & Below to be optimistic and focused on how we can imagine a different future for ourselves, how we can come up with creative solutions for problems.”
Naga and The Captainess in Golden Gate Park. Photo from their website.
Orlando is the co-founder of Five Ton Crane, one of the Bay Area's well-known and well-respected artist collectives and fabrication studios, known for producing some of the most technically ambitious works to emerge from the Burning Man community. He is also the founder of Engineered Artworks, a studio dedicated to the design and fabrication of large-scale public art and experiential environments, and Artifact Logistics, a specialized transportation and installation company that helps artists move and install oversized artworks throughout the country.
Together, these organizations represent every stage of the creative process. Orlando has built an ecosystem capable of bringing complex artistic visions to life. While art cars have been his main art focus for Burning Man over the last several years, he has collaborated on several large scale Burning Man structures such as as Naga and The Captainess, the largest art piece for Burning Man in 2024 and now a beloved piece of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park made by Engineered Artworks own Cjay Roughgarden, Stephanie Shipman, and Jacquelyn Wren Scott.
Some of the team building Above & Below
About the Above & Below Team?
These large scale art projects take many hands to create such awe-inspiring structures. Before fabrication starts, Orlando has been working with structural engineers to make sure the 40 foot sculpture is safe, stable, and capable of withstanding both the harsh conditions of Burning Man and the thousands of participants who will interact with it. Once installed at Burning Man, visitors will be able to step inside Above & Below, explore its immersive lower levels, and climb through the beanstalk to an elevated viewing platform.
This piece will be built within 4 months with only 10 days to install it at Burning Man. In order to meet this lofty timeline, Orlando is working with a team of over 130 volunteers with skills that vary from project management, fundraising, logistics, wood working, fabrication and set design. His core team consists of experts in each of these fields.
Above & Below’s core fabrication team:
@seanorlandoartist
@fivetoncrane
@engineered_artworks
@michluvsu
@rsneight
@jscott117
@taniaseabock
@the_octogent
@joyce.shul.man
@andibuiltitwithmyvagina
@tallmaninavan
@zgummer
@clay_and_steel
Above and Below concept. Image by Amanda Denz.
On Partnering with Burning Man & Where the Piece Will Go After the Event:
I wanted to ask Sean how Burning Man was helping and a little more about the partnership. As an honorarium piece, Burning Man does help provide seed money for this piece. However, the bulk of the funding will come from fundraising.
Orlando talked a bit with me about how Burning Man also will help with installation and logistics once the piece is in Black Rock City so that the artists can focus on building the art, “Burning Man will provide certain resources, heavy equipment for us to install so we don’t have to worry about the cost of those logistics."
Once Burning Man ends, Orlando and his team will look for the next home for Above & Below. History suggests the sculpture won't be searching for long. Orlando has always been able to find temporary and permanent homes for his work, with installations appearing in public spaces (like a rocket ship he co-created which landed in SF's Embarcadero), festivals, museums, breweries, sculpture parks, and private collections across the country.
Where to find more information about the project online:
