Bill Dan is a sculptor and performance artist specializing in rock balancing

Rock balancing

Rock balancing is an art, discipline, or hobby depending upon the intent of the practitioner, in which rocks are balanced on top of one another in various positions.-Modes of rock balancing:...

. He creates seemingly impossible, temporary balanced sculptures from un-worked rock and stone in public spaces near his home in San Francisco.

Dan was born in Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, and worked as a warehouseman before discovering the artistic possibilities of rock along the San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

 shoreline and his emergent skill in manipulating them.

Bill was initially inspired by rock piles he had seen on the Big Island

Hawaii (island)

The Island of Hawaii, also called the Big Island or Hawaii Island , is a volcanic island in the North Pacific Ocean...

 of Hawai'i, the cairn

Cairn

Cairn is a term used mainly in the English-speaking world for a man-made pile of stones. It comes from the or . Cairns are found all over the world in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, and also in barren desert and tundra areas...

s of the Inuit

Inuit

The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...

, and later by the work of Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy, OBE is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. He lives and works in Scotland.-Life and career:The son of F...

.

In 2004, he was featured on San Francisco public television station KQED as one of the artists in a show entitled "Collaborations with Nature". Since then, he has been the subject of interviews and shows on TV stations in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

, and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, as well as other U.S. stations.

Photos of his art have appeared in "Coast and Ocean", the magazine of the California Coastal Commission

California Coastal Commission

The California Coastal Commission is a state agency in the U.S. state of California with quasi-judicial regulatory oversight over land use and public access in the California coastal zone....

, where he was the subject of a lengthy article, and have been used for book, magazine, and educational materials. He has been a featured presenter
with the California Academy of Sciences

California Academy of Sciences

The California Academy of Sciences is among the largest museums of natural history in the world. The academy began in 1853 as a learned society and still carries out a large amount of original research, with exhibits and education becoming significant endeavors of the museum during the twentieth...

 and the Zeum

Zeum

Zeum: San Francisco's Children's Museum is a hands-on, multimedia arts and technology museum for kids of all ages located at the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco, California. It aims to nurture the "3Cs of 21st-century literacy - Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication - in all youth and...

exploratory space in San Francisco. A DVD compendium of video clips taken of Bill Dan at work by himself, by a professional filmmaker, and by a local amateur, entitled "The First Bill Dan Collection" is currently
sold-out.

Bill Dan has frequently been asked about the "meaning" of his work, and he often replies that "Some people try to make things too complicated. This is the opposite."

External links

• Rock On, Rock ON!, Dan's official website.
• The Rocker, where Dan showcases work of balancers from around the world.
• Bill Dan's photos on Flickr
• KQED profile with streaming video
• Yahoo! Pick review of his website