My brother has a GTO. He takes it to car shows and buys obscenely high priced, high octane gas to get it to run. It’s loud and whiplash fast. It sleeps in the garage a lot.

A few years back, I made a couple of under-the-hood ornaments for him to put on it at the car shows.

One rides the radiator hose, the other is a glorified wingnut to hold the air cleaner cover in place. both are cast bronze.

Back around 2010, I was working small. I spent some time dabbling in bronze, but needed commissions to cover the cost. So in the down time, I developed a process for pouring pewter into high heat silicone rubber molds that I could reuse many times.

I developed 17 poses in rubber molds. 7 were male, 10 were female. I still have those molds in storage. Each figure is about four and a quarter inches tall. All of them were represented in the diptych “The Chasm”.

I used some of the same figures in “the Clique,” shown at the top of this post and “the Players.” all of these were dioramas of a sort.

I have a long standing interest in the role of context, and these pieces rely entirely on social context since the figures are copied unchanged from one piece to the next. Watch for a post entitled “Max Wax” for another study in context. It’s not up yet but when it is, I will edit this with a link.

As soon as I began to play with the open wire figure, I noticed the shadows. They are two dimensional line drawings in light. Two dmensional line drawings of three dimensional line drawings! Is your head spinning yet?

The shadow drawings flatten the image. Photographs also flatten the image, and because the wire figure is transparent, you can see the back right through the front. When you look at the work in person, your stereo vision tells you what is in front and what is in back. But in photos, and in shadows, it can be hard to tell if the figure is facing toward you or away from you.

Now let’s add another twist to all of this confusion. I promise, your head will spin before we are done.

Much of my work is designed to hang in mid air. The life sized figures only weigh about 20 pounds and hang easily. The piece in this video was hung at Studios on the Park in Paso Robles in August of 2017 for an exhibit called Three Part Harmony. It was a three person show with Colleen Gnos and Larry LeBrane.

It hung from a single strand of 1/16″ aircraft cable, and from time to time on the opening night I would give it a spin. I discovered that a whole new dimension was revealed in the rotation of the piece.

But wait! there’s more. The next video is of a piece I hung at one of the Phantom Shows put on by the Sculpture Group which was affiliated with the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art back in the day. It occurred in January of 2018.The effect was to project two shadow line drawings on the wall that were clearly representing the same piece. But each was completely unique with respect to the other. And of course, I gave the piece a spin now and then. It would turn around 15 or so times, wind the cable, and then spin back the other way, unwinding the cable. This process took about 5 minutes to complete, and I found that the viewers of the spin were transfixed. Every time I spun it, a crowd gathered to watch it, and did not move on until it stopped. It was as if the constantly changing drawings on the wall and the three dimensional line drawing spinning in the room were too much to absorb. It’s not quite the same in video, but take a look.

This public art project is currently under construction for installation at San Luis Square in San Luis Obispo. It is designed to accentuate the long narrow passage way at the Higuera Street entrance, inviting pedestrians in and teasing guests at the restaurant opposite with visual play.

It is scheduled for completion in late Spring, 2025.

Nature Nights was a winter-long exhibition at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden. Michael was the featured artist throughout the Botanical Garden for the exhibit, which also featured many thousands of tiny LED lights illuminating the grounds and the art.

The San Luis Obispo Public Market at Bonetti Ranch features the public art installation entitled “The Obispo Town Musicians.” It is modeled after the Grimm’s fairytale, “The Bremen Town Musicians.” The image to the right is the final installation. The image in the circle is the model that was used in the initial proposal.

The Public Market is located on the grounds of the Long-Bonetti Ranch; one of the last of the ranches now occupied by the city of San Luis Obispo. The Public Market preserves the old ranch house and water tower and rusting farm implements from the ranch, and the artwork was designed to represent the farming and ranching heritage of the site and the community. It is located at Tank Farm Road and South Higuera Street in San Luis Obispo, CA.