"Lithic Islands", my installation that I have been creating over the last year, is finally complete, minus the additional garden space, which will be installed this fall. My inspiration for creating these seven sculptures and a community garden space was fueled by my desire to bring the experience of appreciating our local insects and plants up close to local Austin residents. These sculptures will be surrounded by hand-selected central Texas native perennials and supported by an irrigation system that will be installed by the Austin Parks and Recreation Department to keep this discovery garden space healthy even during our most brutal droughts. 

Creating these sculptures was a journey of self-discovery and growth as an artist. I had only created a couple of smaller works using this method of ferrocement construction before creating this public work. Working three-dimensionally using this additive and subtractive process was a bit unwieldy at times, and I had to let go and trust the process several times. Unlike previous metal sculptures, where my outcome could be fairly measured and achieved well in advance of realizing the finished sculpture, through multiple maquettes, this process was much less structured. There were times when I was really wondering where the sculptures were going and had to let them grow into what they wanted to be and let go of expectations. Remarkably, they still turned out pretty close to my initial markups, though with a few more gaps for structural integrity's sake. ​

This is my first blog post since the early 2000s. Lets make supporting each other and sharing on decentralized platforms popular again. We don't need to continue to rely on companies that constantly try to monetize every aspect of our lives. I'm giving it a shot, anyway.
​
The last several months to a year a lot of my creative work has been under wraps. I have spent a majority of my time working on a series of ferro-cement sculptures, which perhaps doesn't provide for the most glamorous visual content, so I have also been falling out of habit of posting as much on social media.​

I purchased an outdoor popup carport tent (20'x12') for a couple hundred dollars that I put up in my backyard so that I would have somewhere to weld and create these sculptures. Now that its 100 degrees out I have moved my process into the garage, thankfully. This tent was really a life saver though for most of my project. A majority of my sculptures were built in this space. Ill be taking it down once this project is over. ​

​I've been creating a series of sculptures for a new permanent public art installation in a new park in Austin. I am finally getting to the tail end of this project and am very much looking forward to sharing what I've been working on and whats turned me into a hermit both online and otherwise. 

Here are some various pics of several of the sculptures in process along the way. ​

This project took way longer than expected and took way more out of me. I will definitely be thinking long and hard before taking on another project like this one again in the future. Hundreds of hours of welding, wrapping armatures in a metal skin, mixing a custom cement mix and applying cement definitely changed me as an artist. I look forward to returning to my more free form practice and see how my practice changes because of this project. ​

I will continue documenting this project and sharing here. My anticipated installation is in a couple of weeks. I can't wait to share how this project comes together after installation. If you read this far and care about keeping up with my blog updates, you can click on the rss feed to the right and receive updates.