If you’ve ever been to a music festival, you’ve seen the mesmerizing art installations that transform the blank canvas of a venue into a fully immersive experience. Some festivals pop up for one highly anticipated weekend a year. Others, like EDC, take the magic — larger-than-life art, decorated stages, and all — on the road. That’s where traveling installation pros come in. 

A welder by trade, Cynthia Phillips works on EDC’s set-building crew. Her job takes her from Las Vegas and Orlando to international festival stops, including Mexico City, Seoul, Phuket, and more. Curious how someone gets into this exciting line of work? We caught up with Phillips to get the lowdown on how she landed this enviable gig and what this epic occupation entails.

On Location With EDC’s Set Installation Crew

What does a day in the life of an EDC crew member look like? “I spend all day 80 to 100 feet up in the air,” says Phillips jokingly. But she’s serious. Phillips and the rest of the scenic team are responsible for building the larger-than-life art installations throughout the festival grounds.

“All of the fancy decorations, the stages, everything that turns the space into the immersive experience that it is — that’s all us,” Phillips explains. “So I’m always climbing. All day, every day, I’m either on the scaffolding or the trusses to be able to install these massive pieces.” 

At the start of every festival season, EDC designs a brand-new set that debuts on the festival’s home turf in Las Vegas. “It’s kind of a hidden world,” says Phillips, “so it’s always a surprise, even for the installation team.”

That mystery makes the first build of the season a fun challenge for Phillips. “It’s always a bit of a puzzle figuring it out the first time,” she admits. “But then, as we travel more and more, we get to know the build, so we get better at it. Just like anything, practice makes us faster and more efficient.”

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Even at peak performance, the build team has to be strategic about how they spend their time. “It’s easiest to do welding and installation work with natural light, so we try to maximize our daylight hours and avoid working at night,” she explains.

That often means starting between 5 and 6:30 a.m. and working until 6 or 7 p.m., with a break midday to eat and take a break from the sun. “I’m always thankful for comfortable, supportive work boots that make it possible to be on my feet all day, day after day,” Phillips says.

In addition to comfort, Phillips relies on KEEN Utility Footwear to keep her safe on the job site. “Installation can be a dangerous job,” she says. “You’re climbing scaffolding and using heavy equipment every day. It’s so important to be fully aware and protected.”

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Building an Epic Career Path

Phillips always knew she would pursue a creative lifestyle, but it wasn’t until she took a metal fabrication class that she found a passion for welding.

“I was just as surprised as I think my parents were,” she recalls. “I enrolled in art school for illustration. I envisioned myself writing and illustrating children’s books.”

As part of the curriculum, Phillips’s school required her to take two art classes out of her comfort zone using mediums she’d never tried before. “That’s how I fell in love with metal,” she says. “It completely changed my life. I dropped all of my other classes to enroll exclusively in sculpture. That was 20 years ago, and I never looked back.”

Phillips never saw a clear path from that point to where she is today. Instead, she carved one out as she went. Apprenticing with a blacksmith working on custom furniture led to a gig building sets for off-Broadway shows with a shop right above the custom furniture shop.

Play sets in New York morphed into live event sets in Los Angeles, where Phillips worked for 15 years on builds for the Grammys, Disney, and touring performance artists, including Doja Cat and Beyoncé. 

“People always ask me, ‘How did you get that job?’” she says. “But these aren’t the kinds of jobs you can apply to online. It’s all about who you surround yourself with. You have to be willing to show up at a shop with your resume, knowing basically how to build and learning as you go. That’s how I ended up working in shops with very talented fabricators. And that network has opened so many doors for me.”

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The door to EDC opened 10 years ago. Since then, Phillips has been traveling with the festival and working on installations seasonally. When she’s not on the road, Phillips works out of her studio in the Southern California desert — teaching welding workshops and working on personal projects.

“I love building fun, functional art for my house,” she says. “Cool big robots and stuff like that.” The combination of excitement on the road, coupled with a slower pace of life at home, is an ideal setup for Phillips. “I think you just have to be passionate about what you want and it’ll find you,” she says.

Women in Welding

It’s no secret that men far outnumber women in metal shops — especially when Phillips was coming up in the industry. “Until I started working with EDC, I had never worked with another female welder,” she says. “I didn’t have an easy time at first. It felt lonely. Most days, I walked into work and questioned why I was there.” 

When she started sharing her work on Instagram, Phillips finally got connected with the small but mighty community of women in welding.

“I saw all these other women in trades, and I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “We were all dealing with the same issue. Connecting online and later in person at trade events gave us a space to talk about shared experiences. Knowing other women are out there plowing through a male-dominated is super rad. The trades industry is changing, and it’s changing for the better.”

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A KEEN Luftcell midsole provides responsive support without unnecessary weight, while aluminum safety toes offer job site protection with 35% less weight than steel. Waterproof models feature PFAS-free KEEN.DRY technology that lets vapor out without letting water in.

More About KEEN Utility

Family-owned and values-led for over 20 years, KEEN consistently offers innovative, unapologetically comfortable footwear that lasts. The KEEN Utility work footwear line extends the brand’s offerings to reinvent what a work boot can feel like.

Whether you’re constantly in motion at a warehouse, making deliveries, lifting heavy or bulky loads, or operating in hazardous environments, KEEN Utility footwear supports you from the sole up — so you can feel safe and comfortable, whatever your workday entails. 

As a thoughtful shoemaker with a purpose, KEEN envisions a shoe industry that has a net positive impact on lives and is determined to use its business to do good. To that end, the brand has proudly been PFAS-free since 2018 and consciously works toward sustainable innovations to reduce the “footprint” of its shoes. Learn more at the KEEN website.

This post was sponsored by KEEN.