A funny thing happens at this stage of a sculpture career: one works pretty much seven days a week designing, responding to requests, planning, fabricating, transporting, installing and both hammering stone and welding metal. It's a blast, continually revealing new interests and new directions in the work.
I've had the blessing of so many great projects in the past few years for fantastic clients. This year has really stepped up the scale and the permanence of materials I use.
Where many of my past sculptures were constructed of wood (sticks, branches and discarded lumber), 2016 has been granite, marble, basalt, steel and miles of aluminum.
The change has been due mostly to greater and greater public placement of my work. While I love the warmth and lively contact of wood in both the forming of the sculptures and the experience of engagement it provides to the person experiencing the work, it ultimately does not withstand the elements as durably as stone and metal.
2016 started out with three white marble figures for a private collector in Fountain Springs, AZ. Each female form holds a pose of power and grace denoting the strength of all women.
"Presence" one of the three marble figures 30" tall
Then the Wolf Run Ranch in Dufur, OR asked me for a signature sculpture for their annual arts and music festival called What The Festival (WTF). I created the 76' tall, flowing and glowing steel, aluminum, stretch fabric and DMX controlled light filled "SkyPalace" for them. This piece occupied anout three months of the year and involved 11 people in support of my design.
SkyPalace during setup, daytime and the nighttime lightshow
The most recent sculpture completion is the Jamestown, ND Hansen Art Park anchor sculpture I called "Prarie Grass Ballet". Composed as a kinetic ballad to the beauty and fragility of the midwest prairie it is placed in an open public park and must withstand the rigors of North Dakota weather from 110F degrees in the summer to -40F degrees in the winther with 100mph plus windloads. It was a five month build with half the time spent living in Jamestown, a wonderful place.
The three groupings of 24' tall abstract aluminum grass blades set in 27 tons of local glacial moraine granite
"Prairie Grass Ballet" at night with app controlled LED lighting
Towards the end of the installation in ND I proposed a design for a performance pavilion to anchor the other end of the park and was subsequently awarded a contract to complete designs for and build the "Boulder Pavilion", to be complete by summer 2017.
Model of the "Boulder Pavilion"
I'm now wrapping up the year with several collections that will be created in series with annual additions in the same style. They will be shown in galleries in Santa Fe, Sedona and Los Angeles: the "CloudShips" and "Gaurdians" will be formed of stone and metals.
A "Cloudship" in process
Inspiration and scale for the "Gaurdians" series
Finally is jewelry, "micro-sculpture" as I see it. I produced only one major piece so far this year, the glowing pink Andara pendant for a private collector on CA. I have seven other pendants in process on the bench waiting for my attention plus a mini version of the "Cludships" series.
I have plenty to do through the cold winter!
The Andara