I made a lot of progress in the studio today on a new Flower sculpture. This piece has been on my mind for some time, it just took a while to tweak the proportions and figure out the proper scale. It’s turning out wonderfully, though. I envision an entire series of these pieces – a […]
I just got a head’s up from my printmaker friend Nick Wroblewski that he was recently featured in a beautiful photo essay by Ray + Kelly. This really is a stunning series of images. The intimate and graceful quality of these pictures perfectly compliments the beautiful immediacy of Nick’s work, his new studio and growing […]
This strange weather did its best to hold me back, but I finally got all the trees in the ground. I still need to mulch around 250 of them, but the important part is done. Already I have a lot of buds breaking… very exciting! A friend of mine just asked how I could possibly […]
During my recent trip to North Carolina, I installed Helios Rising at its new permanent home with a wonderful collector of mine. The sculpture is nestled beautifully in a forested landscape just in front of the house… really, the image doesn’t do it justice. The rain (mostly) held off, giving us time to fine-tune the […]
I’m still under the weather here, but in the meantime check out the great work by Matthew Gray Palmer. I met Matthew years ago when we were doing a show together and was immediately impressed by the quality and spontaneity in his work. Those two things don’t usually work well together for most people. In […]
If you’ve never seen the work of Kris Kuksi, you really need to pay his site a visit. Though he does some 2D as well, I think of him primarily as a sculptor. His detail-rich sculptures are worlds unto themselves. Like Nature itself, you can just fall into them and explore. Though thematically there […]
As promised, I just added an Artifacts Gallery to my site complete with some brand-spanking-new images. Check it out here. There are two more new pieces as well, Artifact VIII and Artifact IX. I think these pictures do a much better job of conveying the fine detail of these sculptures. Special thanks to my little […]
Just a quick shot of a new Artifact sculpture in progress. I really like how the improvisational quality of these leads to unexpectedly pleasing forms. This one in particular I think is quite fine and dynamic.
Spring is (very nearly) in the air – it’s time to start getting ready. I’ve had my trees ordered for months now but still have work to do on making “tree mats,” accumulating wood chips and fixing/building more water tanks. Initially, I had planned to scale planting back a bit after last year. Obviously that […]
I recently discovered these stunning sculptures by fellow Minnesota sculptor Aaron Spangler. His work no doubt needs to be fully appreciated in person, but the images are enough to cause me to flutter with excitement. Though carved in basswood, they really look like they were hewn from the soil itself. These are fully realized works […]
The vast majority of all new work created is terrible. Utterly forgettable. When you think of the sheer volume of things made or ideas had at any given moment, it could not be otherwise. Like an evolutionary brainstorming session, we throw everything we have up against the wall just to see what sticks. And most […]
A couple weeks ago was the opening of the annual Essential Art Competition by one of our local organizations, Visual Arts Minnesota. I’ve been doing the show for years and it’s a good reason to get out of the studio in the middle of winter and visit the beautiful Paramount Theatre in downtown St. Cloud. […]
I rarely show anyone sketches or working drawings for sculptures. If you happen to drop by the studio and see the materials scattered about, that’s fine. In fact, feel free to page through the stacks of drawings on the counter as well. Knock yourself out, you might find something interesting. It’s not for any ideological […]
Happy (somewhat belated) New Year to everyone out there! Personally, I’ve been waiting for 2013 for some time now. See those two shriveled up and dying gooseberry cuttings on the left that didn’t take? Yeah, those are 2012. See those healthy two in the cup on the right, thrusting out new branches and threatening to […]
As promised, two more Artifact sculptures… You can see the natural tendency for these sculptures to “grow” – Artifact VII is more than twice as big as some earlier ones. In general, I hope to constrain that expansion, but sometimes you just have to work in the scale that feels best, as revealed by the […]
