For info on commissioned pieces, contact beatnikprints@gmail.com
This piece was amazing to see come together! I depicts the entirety of the state of Colorado above 9000 feet in elevation. The central chrome mirror section is an unbroken piece of land that creates the spine of the state, and the gold and dark mirror sections surrounding it are isolated sections of 9000 foot elevations. Easily the largest sculpture I have made to date, this one felt amazing to finally see in one piece on the wall.
These two pieces are in the new Asher Adams hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. THey use vintage USGS maps to recreate two important sections of the transcontinental railroad that connected Utah to the rest of the United States. The railroad lines themselves are included in the pieces using painted wood segments. These pieces are in a back conference room, viewable from the top of the lawn stairs in the Gateway Plaza’s Olympic square.
This sculpture was a blast to work on. It was commissioned for the lobby of the Symetra building in downtown Bellevue. This sculpture shows the landforms surrounding Lake Washington, including most of Seattle and Bellevue. The street grid cuts into the rolling hills, and are viewable in the topography in a few places, which I enjoy illustrating. This was also my first stab at depicting bathymetric data, basically underwater topography. This is illustrated in the lines emanating light in the dark mirrored acrylic. If you are in the King County area, go check it out, it is a really welcoming and chic lobby, with some great food too!
This sculpture shows the isolated topography of Mt Mitchell in 3D sculpture, with the surrounding topography depicted as black and mirrored banding. These are mostly process pictures for now while they finish the space at the Avery in Asheville NC.
This commission lives in the Spring Hill Suites in Jackson Wyoming! It depicts the topography of the entire Teton range, with the elevation higher than Teton pass sculpted from layers of painted wood, and the topographic lines lower that the summit of Teton pass shining through the mirror acrylic. The Teton’s themselves are just a small part of the sculpture, near the middle lower section of the sculpture. North is to the right in this orientation.
These pieces were so fun and liberating to make. I bought a bunch of queer interest magazines from EBAY to create these.
This piece is titled “Making Eyes At My Clone”. it is a relief sculpture of my head on the left, with the negative carved out of the layers of magazine on the right. The pages come from magazines like U MAN from the 70s through the early 2000s. There was no wast materials with this piece, all cut materials were used.
This piece is titled “Under the Sheets 1: Finn and Cody”. It comes from a 3D scan of a gay couple together underneath a sheet in their bed. This piece speaks to how queer couples often need to hide their affection, and indeed their true selves, from the outside world. I was also alluding to how I have felt most comfortable and open in the safety of my own bedroom.
The rest of the pieces were made from the scraps of “Under the Sheets 1: Finn and Cody”, This first one is “Add On Us”.
“No Man Can Truly Be Seen, Because I’ve Intentionally Obscured Them All”
And finally, “We All Know Lesbians Can Read, But Did You Know That Some Of Us Gays Can Also Read?”. The full gallery of these pieces can be found below.
These pieces were made from shards of mirrored acrylic repurposed from past projects. All these photos were taken by the very talented WM Artist Services, www.wmartistservices.com
I was beyond honored to be asked to create a solo museum exhibit for the amazing Littleton Museum in Littleton CO. It was a bit daunting to fill the space available, but I am incredibly proud of how it turned out. The sow was titled “REinterpreting REcreating Nature” and it housed a range of pieces, from the first ever topographic experiments to my most recent installation pieces, and a wide range between. Thank you to the Littleton Museum for this amazing opportunity, you can see a video of me giving an artist talk at the museum HERE. These great images were taken by WM Artist Services, www.wmartistservices.com
his experiment was a wedding present for a friend. The 3D elements of the map come from the section of the Grand Canyon where the proposal happened, and the road maps are from a Colorado Road Atlas, where both of the couple are from.
These two pieces were created using topographic data of the Roaring Fork River watershed, which flows from the Elk Mountains, through Aspen and Carbondale, and into the Colorado river in Glenwood Springs. This map includes some of the most visited features in the US Forest system, including the Maroon Bells, Snowmass and Capitol peaks, and Conundrum hot springs.The first piece depicts the topography from slices of 1/8th inch wood, and the second piece is the inverse of the landscape, using the pieces that are cut from the original piece to create another interpretation of the land!
This sculpture of the Telluride area was originally set into a coffee table that was sold at a non-profit fundraiser, and then the patron who bought it decided to hang the art piece on their wall!
This mat board relief sculpture depicts the unedited topography of a section of the sand hills in Nebraska. The shapes and patterns are incredibly hard to find anywhere else in the world at this scale!
This beautiful piece was commissioned for the Le Meridian hotel in Salt Lake City UT through 9 Dot Arts. This was my second piece to use backlighting, and boy do people love that element! The topography of the Wasatch Mountains above 7000 feet just west of SLC are depicted in the 3D sculpture, and the topography lines below 7000 feet the glowing white lines. This piece is made from laser etched mirrored acrylic, painted wood, bent frosted acrylic, and LED lights. It measures 64 inches in diameter, and is 5 inches deep.
I also made a second colored version of the 3D sculpture.
Through funding provided by the City of Durango’s Lodgers Tax Arts and Culture Fund, I installed these two topographic tables in the Welcome Center on Main Ave in my home town of Durango Colorado. It is such an honor to finally have artwork in my hometown, blocks away from where I grew up!
Durango Table: The first table shows the immediate area surrounding the town of Durango.
Purgatory Table: This table shows the area north, south, and east of Purgatory Ski Area, including Cascade Creek, Engineer Mountain, the West Needle Mountains, and the Hermosa Cliffs.
Go check them out if you are ever in Durango!
This painted wood installation depicts the watershed of the upper Colorado River, from its source down to the confluence with the green river in Canyonlands NP. The individual watersheds of the rivers that make this system are further broken out, creating the cracks in the feature that resemble dried mud.
These out door hand sculptures spell out the letters NOBO using American Sign Language finger spelling. I installed these for the North Boulder (NoBo) Arts District the support of the Armory Boulder. Go check them out in North Boulder CO!
I was honored to be selected for an amazing opportunity in Telluride in the summer of 2022. Ah Haa School for the Arts is an amazing arts non-profit in the town of Telluride (in my opinion the prettiest town in the lower 48 states, prove me wrong!) that teaches the community all different types of artistic expression, and teaches all age ranges! Their annual fundraiser in 2022 transformed from a silent auction into an installation immersive experience, and I was selected to create one of the rooms. My installation was two 18 foot long sculptures, one depicting the topography of the near by Willson Massif, and the other the rugged mountains surrounding near by Mount Sneffels. This was so amazing to see come to life, and a butt load of work, there are over 270 separate slats of wood in this room, and each one had to be modeled, cut and painted, with 2 coats!
These first pictures are of the sculptures in the room, before the lighting crew came in to finish the installation.
And these pics are of the beautifully lit final installation!
In 2023 these sculptures were re-installed at a solo museum show at the Littleton Museum, the show was titled “Re-interpreting Re-ceating Nature”. These amazing photos were taken by Photos by: WM Artist Services, www.wmartistservices.com
So this is going to be a journey through experimentation, woohoo!
Initially i wanted to take the topographic slices technique to biological forms, so I found some free 3D models online to slice. These turned out great when cut out of mat board. I also created a little animation with the hands from this.
A few years later I had some extra money to run some experiment with, so I paid for some scans of my face and hands, to create 3D sculptures with.
Slicing these with a #D printing program called Slic3r, i created these 2D images
Those 2D images created these small test sculptures
Then I started editing, warping, and combining the 2D versions
Which led to these sculptures which are some of my absolute favorites
I also created some large scale hands
Which I loved so much I did little photo shoot with the first large hand I made
I made a few more hands, including a Grateful Dead hand
Finally for these little experiments, I started merging landscapes into the biological forms, starting with my a bust of my head with Longs Peak
And finally, this creepy combo of my face and The Loop in Canyonlands
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk
This was an installation of my recreation of the Colorado 14,000 ft peaks in mirrored acrylic. It lives in the lobby of The Fitzgerald in Denver Colorado. I love how this mirrored acrylic catches the light. Thanks to Walker Fine Art and Nine Dot Arts for making this commission possible!
This is the first ever piece I made depicting a watershed, and it turned out great! This is the Animas river, that flows from the San Juan mountains in south-west Colorado, down to the confluence with the San Juan river in New Mexico, and it is also the river I grew up on. This piece measures roughly 32 in wide, 48 in tall, and 4 in thick. I didn’t quite think about weight as I was designing this piece, and boy did it end up heavy!
