Multiple Bay Area artists are trying to recover their treasures.
They submitted their giant sculptures to an exhibit in Las Vegas, but when it went belly up, they were told to retrieve their work or lose it.
Transfix was touted as the world's largest touring immersive art experience featuring massive sculptures from artists featured at Burning Man, like the "Revolution" from Marco Cochrane of Petaluma.
The plan was for Transfix to stay in Vegas through the fall and then tour the country for three years, but six weeks into the show, artists say the founders declared bankruptcy and left.
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Now, several artists from the Bay Area are left to deal with the fallout.
"They were contracted to have their art returned to them, but with the company going bankrupt there was no funding available and no company to return the art," artist Tom Sepe said.
Sepe, who is originally from the Bay Area, is now volunteering his time to disassemble the pieces and move them.
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"To have the funding pulled and have all these artists’ pieces just stuck here in a lot outside a casino in Vegas with no way to get them back, no plan and no communication, it was incredibly frustrating," Sepe said. "These pieces are big, they’re heavy, they’re technical and involve cranes."
A GoFundMe campaign was started to help save the art. There is enough money to place the pieces in temporary storage but not enough to get them back to their creators.
Sean Orlando is an artist who runs the trucking company Artifact Logistics out of Richmond.
"One art piece in particular, Marco Cochrane’s sculpture, takes up two 53-foot semi-truck flat beds," Orlando said.
He is donating his time, trucks and crews to help the artists.
"A lot of them don’t have a lot of money and they were promised things by Transfix – promised money for exhibiting their work," Orlando said. "None of the artists got paid."
NBC Bay Area was unable to reach the Transfix founders.
Crews in Vegas said Resorts World has been patient and even rented heavy machinery for them to use but also wants the art moved.
Same goes for the artists who want to give their installations new life somewhere else.
