Daniel Dancer

Daniel Dancer’s many layered work has been shaped by his travels worldwide in search of styles of being that engender happiness, sustainability and connection to Earth. Dancer is an art-activist-educator who wields various media in an effort to break the culture–wide amnesia that endangers all life on Earth. After getting his MA degree in psychology at the University of Kansas, he left the academic world to pursue a career as an eco-artist and environmental photographer. His striking images of beauty, and destruction have been published in books and magazines worldwide. Twelve years of creating “eco-sculptures” with found materials in endangered eco-systems around the world are documented in his second book, Desperate Prayers: A Quest For Sense in a Senseless Time. These days, Dancer works with schools and communities world-wide in giant residency projects called Art For the Sky, where hundreds, sometimes thousands of people (and often materials of various sorts) become human pixels in giant “living paintings” that only make sense from the sky. Each fleeting image is a metaphor about the power of collaboration and community, our connection to the whole, and the importance of awakening what he calls our sky sight to help us understand the big picture and harness our highest creative potential..

Dancer founded a model environmental community called Rowena Wilds in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge where he lives in an earth-sheltered home made of recycled materials. Participating in the green cemetery movement, most recently Daniel founded one of only three conservation burial grounds in the country. Called White Eagle Memorial Preserve, he serves as general manager for this 20 acre “after-life community” on wild land in Washington state. Daniel is also a musician. Wild is the Way is his debut CD of his original music with his band, Skysight. And for the record . . . Dancer is his real last name. He is part Mohawk Indian.