stratum slab o3
stratum slab o4
stratum slabs o3, o4
49 × 36” | 60 × 30” | C O M M I S S I O N | 2 0 2 6
Both the 10 panel set ( Stratum Slab o3 ) and the full horizontal panel ( Stratum Slab o4 ) were commissioned by The Family Medicine Center at Kaiser Permanente in Escondido, Ca. The project brief called for a local artist to take a colorful and fun approach to creating artwork that features San Diego’s unique landscape and lighting, with a focus on our gentle mountainous terrain.
As a San Diegan having had the good fortune of living/working both in East County and at the coast, I’ve admired, studied, and fallen in love with the poetry of our landscape from both directions. So I was commissioned to create a series of wall sculptures in the form of a stratified topographic poem, serving as an ode of this region. Looking east to west presents a gently sloping horizon layered with marine light and moisture, warm twilight silhouettes diluted by the watercolor blur of evening fog, a view of shadowed canyons and bluffs, topped by a distant twinkling slice of ocean. But turn around and look west to east and you’ll find foothills rising, the arched palms giving way to fuzzy blankets of woodland growth. Eroding coastal sandstone and sturdier mounds of mesas slowly aggravate into rugged, rocky crests, as the sun rises to warm and greet the last bit of continent. Our topography changes latitudinally as quickly as the mist moves and the pockets of people, politics, cultures, and colors do. This artwork, made of poured plaster and pigmented resin on wood, is an abstract interpretation and celebration of the geographic, atmospheric, and cultural layers that make up this beautiful place… San Diego, CA.
inspiration + process
