206 x 96 inches each (3 niches) | acid-cut mirror-polished brass | 2014 | Permanent Site-Specific Commission, commissioned through Kinzelman Art Consulting | Baker & McKenzie | Houston, TX
Big Brass Bayou is a site-specific artwork made of ninety-one pieces of mirror-polished brass, filling three niches at Baker & McKenzie’s Houston offices. The work is an abstracted montage of a meandering wetland. While the overall composition and imagery are products of my imagination, the general concept is motivated in part by Houston’s Buffalo Bayou and its native river plants and flowers.
The initial artwork was created in the studio out of hand-cut paper. The contoured imagery from those paper silhouettes was electronically transferred into the computer for further development. Finished outlines were loaded into a 3D computer model and then physically fabricated out of highly polished brass sheeting. The cutting was done via photo-chemical etching — an acid-based process that cuts through the brass precisely without distortion. Each component was hand-polished and installed in its precise configuration.