I now have my full selection of ceramic art tiles as well as a full color assortment of my magnetic 3D-printed valentines hearts and Texas elevation maps available on Amazon Prime, allowing for free 2-day shipping for Prime members, or non-members with qualifying orders. Check out my inventory on my Amazon storefront.

“The Spirograph Sun Also Rises”, Encaustic & 3D-printed ABS, 18″x21″, $500
“White Gaslamp #1″, Encaustic & 3D-printed ABS, 24″x12″x6”, $600
“Gaslamp: Foggy Blue”, Encaustic & 3D-printed ABS, 18″x21″, $500

My Archway Gallery wall in May showcases two of my hexagon-framed pieces and one of my white gaslamps.

The Spirograph Sun Also Rises was inspired by my childhood obsession with my Spirograph set. The lower region has glass shards taken from the door thieves broke through in our home robbery last year.

White Gaslamp #1 features a 3D-printed representation of the gaslamp in our front yard against a green flower garden. The gaslamp, including its supports, took over 20 hours to print in its five sections.

Gaslamp: Foggy Blue is a more 2D interpretation of our gaslamp, against a muddled blue sky.

Combining layered image transfers with 3D-printed ABS, Tchaikovsky: Can’t go that low pulls my violin-playing days together with my oil sector career.

The musical score is the violins’ first bars of the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. The bottom portion of the piece is highly-textured encaustic, and the center tree and the colored strata are 3D-printed ABS.

Probably the greatest memory playing the violin came during a particular rehearsal with the Iowa State University Symphony. We were rehearsing Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. I was no virtuoso by any means – in fact I was way in the back of the second violin section – but this particular rehearsal, on this particular piece, I experienced a period of nirvana: I could not play a wrong note! This never happened again on the violin. And I can’t remember a sensation like that ever happening on the piano.

The inspiration for this piece came from the grand opening motif of the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s 5th. It struck me as odd that all of the violins – half of the strings – dropped out on the critical 8th note of the opening. The note was too low for the violins to play. So everybody else had to punch it. Why didn’t Tchaikovsky just raise the key a few notes?

A position of power 2, 9″x12″, encaustic on birch panel, SOLD

Basswood hurricane, 15″x11″, encaustic & vermiculite on birch panel, $400

Juror Anna Tahinci of the Glassell School of Arts at Museum of Fine Art Houston has selected two of my works to be in the Visual Arts Alliance 9th Juried Invitational Exhibition. These are on exhibit on the concourse level of 1600 Smith St in downtown Houston from January 10 through the end of February. These pieces are on the kiosk closest to the stairs.

A position of power 2 is the largest of my 3-piece trio on this subject. I have a koi pond in my front yard and a bayou a half-block away, so every so often we find a heron stop by looking for a snack. This particular fellow flew up to the utility line from the pond deck as I made my presence known. I retreated to the back deck where I had a good shot at him with my Canon camera. I photoshopped out the background trees and sky and put in my own encaustic sky. I then did an image transfer of the image back on top of the encaustic.

Basswood hurricane is from my Tree Basement series described in my Vermiculite and February 2015 posts. It is the smallest of the series which has sold well.

Both are available for purchase. Contact me for logistics. Note that both pieces must remain on exhibition until the conclusion of the show March 19.

Center: “Chartres”, 18″x20″, encaustic, $500
Others: various, 6″x6″, $100 each

My November, 2015 wall at Archway Gallery features my first public exhibition of my hexagon frameworks. This piece has a subtle under-etchings and is topped by stenciled etchings using instruments I talked my dentist into providing. After a friend’s comment that it had a New Orleans vibe, I named it after a venerable French Quarter street: Chartres.

The larger of the 6″x6″ pieces are some of my earlier pieces where I was doing more elaborate framing and applying a 2-part resin top-coat. The upper left is one of my pieces featuring vermiculite, and the lower right is one of my rare abstracts.

On September 23rd, 2015 the Visual Arts Alliance held the opening reception and awards ceremony for the 33rd Juried Membership Exhibition at 1600 Smith in downtown Houston. This exhibition was open to all current VAA members and was juried by the notable Gus Kopriva, owner of Redbud Gallery in Houston.

From the 457 submissions from 126 member artists Kopriva selected 65 works by 66 artists that will be on display at 1600 Smith Street through Saturday, November 22, 2015.

I was delighted to have my recent piece “Winter – Take It Away Kid” selected as one of those 65 works.  It is one of many I am producing for my upcoming solo exhibition in February at Archway Gallery utilizing 3D-printed material incorporated into the artwork.

A stark tree image buried under many layers of encaustic rises and enlarges, with the final iteration being a large 3D-printed rendering emerging off the surface of the encaustic.

You may recognize this as a progression of my “Song of the whippoorwill” encaustic that was in the Lawndale Big Show last year. It also incorporates a bit of my “Maestro if you please” piece with the music score.

As a whole it depicts a memory of my sitting in the back of my high school orchestra in the percussion section, watching idly as the strings rehearsed a movement from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” – a piece that really inspired me to take up the violin.

The music score is the opening violin solo from Vivaldi’s Winter movement of The Four Seasons. Mari Samuelsen performs it at the 0:44 mark: