Centered

Centered by Darrell Ansted
Seven plasma-cut steel rings, 25’ x 8’, embedded LEDs

Seven rings. Seven thresholds. Seven chances to walk through yourself.

Darrell Ansted’s Centered is a monumental alignment of steel circles, each precisely 7 feet 2 inches tall and spaced 3.5 feet apart, forming a straight line across the desert floor like a cosmic spine. By day, they catch the New Mexico sun and carve it into arcs of shadow and light. By night, embedded LEDs pulse in shifting colors, transforming the high desert into an illuminated passageway.

For Ansted—who has spent more than three decades bending, shaping, and powder-coating steel—art is both craft and meditation. His discovery of Burning Man in 2009 ignited a desire to build at scale, where light and metal fuse into experiences larger than life. “On its most basic level,” he says, “my work is an attempt to transform physical shapes into an awakened state of reflection, impermanence, and connection to oneness and self.”

Centered references the seven chakras, but avoids cliché. The steel rings are raw and industrial, yet intentional—abstract portals that invite movement as ritual. Step into the first circle and you’ll feel the invitation to slow down. Move through each successive ring and something shifts: anxiety peels away, noise recedes, quiet arrives. It’s sculpture as pilgrimage, art as threshold.

Ansted’s large-format steel works have long explored the intersection of structure and spirit, but Centered is his most immersive gesture. It doesn’t just stand—it holds space. It doesn’t just shine—it reorients. In the open desert, where silence speaks louder than billboards, Centered becomes both landmark and mirror, reminding us that alignment isn’t found—it’s walked into.