And the layout begins, with soapstone on my freshly swept studio floor. The lines mimic the concrete pad at the base of the flag pole where the sculpture will be built.

After doing 4 drawings, each one getting closer to what I wanted, building this mock up went quickly and I was reminded of why our art teachers always made sure that we spent more time than we wanted on those pages of thumbnail sketchs...

The Courthouse Lawn...

"Artifact" Mock Up

I am really excited to share with folks the news of my first public piece. This April, Chattanooga will host the first annual HATCH arts festival. Being compared in scale to the famed Spoleto Festival from my hometown of Charleston, HATCH will be a 10 day, city wide celebration of the growing arts scene in my current home of Chattanooga. There will be parades, pop-up performances, gallery shows, an art fair, a sculpture conference, a graffiti skate park built on MLK Blvd. and 10, commissioned "Artifacts"(no relation to my new studio). The Artifacts are, "physical and phenomenal constructions inspired by 10 sites in the 10x10 footprint. Sites are selected for their unique aesthetic and historical significance speaking to the rich and industrial heritage of Chattanooga."

I am humbled to announce that I was invited to make one of these Artifacts. My site, the Hamilton Co. Courthouse, located at a prominent intersection in downtown Chattanooga. I could not be more thrilled to have this opportunity. I have wanted to do a public piece for a long time now, to get my work into the very landscape that inspires it. So, to celebrate this, and share my excitement with others, I will be posting progress of this large scale sculpture on my blog for the next few weeks. The install date is April 13th and until then I will be super busy, but in between breathes, I will do my best to keep folks updated.

And so it begins, with a drawing of what will soon be an actual mock up, which soon after will be a sculpture much larger than anything I have ever taken on...

Wish me luck.

In the Name of Nature

Sequatchie Valley, TN (toppled church)

I drove past this downed church one day last fall, late for work already, but I had to stop. Classic Tennessee folk sporting blue jeans, cut off shirts, and ball caps all stood around drinking their coffee in somber silence as the fog slowly lifted off of the morning.

This house of salvation was once a watering hole for the less godly locals. The couple that lived behind it had other ideas; they would take back this playground from the devil and turn it into good. They were close too. All the gables had been set and they were ready to start skinning the roof. They had even had their first service there over the weekend. The gravity of transition would prove too much however, for the night after the last gable had been set, a devilish wind came through, and rearranged their house of order into one of divine chaos.

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Nickajack, TN

The Slow Death of Americana

The Slow Death of Americana

The windshield wipers slosh away a light mix of rain and snow while I cut through the forested mountains of the Santiam Pass. Every fifteen minutes or so I pass through a small town with a population smaller than the amount of friends I have on Facebook (and I am no social media butterfly). The storefronts are nothing more than empty shacks made of rain-swollen wood and covered with moss since the local pizza place, burger shack, or general store closed down. Their populations have dwindled to almost nothing over the past twenty years. I know this because I grew up in one of these small towns.... read the rest here.

-Sean Davis(who I don't know but would like too) - recommended to me by another great writer and good friend, Katey Schultz.