The Story of Sacred Monster

Art as Fetish: Fetish as Art

In 1992 I set out to make a stone sculpture that could not be touched. The inspiration was the Kongo nkisi nkondi, power figures driven with nails. The title was Untouchable You.

Once finished, it became a logistical problem, a cosmic joke I had played on myself: a thousand-pound sculpture that had to be moved but could not be touched. Predictably, it was damaged in 1995 in the move from Art City to StoneWorks, Michelle Chapin’s studio. In December 1998 a fire at Art City destroyed all my stored work. Safe at StoneWorks, in Ventura, Untouchable You was the sole survivor.

There it sat until 2017, when the sculpture yard was reorganized and I was asked to remove it. With neither the means to move it nor a place to put it, I accepted an offer from Norm Fawley, a client of my Structural Integration practice: a truck, and space at his ranch in Cayucos.

Eight years later, in 2025, with Norm in failing health, I had to decide whether to finish the damaged sculpture or abandon it. I repaired the damage by reinstalling the original nails and, unexpectedly, adding many thousands more. Absorbed again in the demands of the artwork, I let the piece dictate a different path: from untouchability to survivorship, from prohibition to indifference.

Hence the new title: Sacred Monster, or Monstre Sacré. In French culture, a monstre sacré is a figure of such stature that ordinary rules no longer apply. The sculpture had earned the name. It survived what destroyed everything else and requires its own terms, including a hand truck special-ordered for its body: the Dutro Brute, rated at 1,600 lbs, which will accompany Sacred Monster for its lifetime. For many nights I had worked out the move in my dreams. In June 2026 it was moved without incident by a crew wearing Sacred Monster T-shirts. The complete move is on video: proof of concept.

Dedicated to Norm Fawley (1942–2025), a sacred monster in his own right, without whose generosity it would not have been finished.