"I worked on “Messenger” entirely on my own. I became a certified welder back in the 1980s, so I have always done all of my own fabrication and installations. I'm sure, after all the time that has passed since this one was made, that if I came to look at “Messenger” I could find many faults with the fabrication, as one always does when one progresses in one’s field of art. I always strive to make each piece better than the last. The need to work on my own is a combination of being a control freak and a perfectionist. I always feel that if I were to hire someone else, they probably wouldn’t give the same level of attention to detail as myself. And after going through all the trouble of making the piece, it is always fun for me to install the piece on my own.

Fabrication is a generalized term for cutting and welding together parts in mild steel, or other metals, such as stainless steel in the case of “Messenger.” The architectural bronze disc is fabricated, as well. All of the materials in the sculpture age over time, but can be easily cleaned up from inevitable environmental stresses. The big glass parts are castings, and that process is called pâte de verre, French for “paste of glass,” [Watch a video by Corning Museum of Glass on the pâte de verre casting technique] a process similar to the lost was method in bronze casting [Watch a video by Victoria and Albert Museum showing the process involved in casting a bronze figure]. For “Messenger” I made positive forms out of laminated layers of blue board that were shaped with a shear form rasp, and then sanded. Around these forms, I poured molds which were a 50% plaster and 50% flint mix. I welded steel reinforcing frames on the outside of the molds, and I also incorporated chicken wire into the molds themselves; for very large castings like the ones in “Messenger,” this helped to hold them together during the firing process. I placed the molds in the kiln, empty and cold, filled the molds with small glass particles (“frit”), and then brought the temperature back up to melting. I kept topping off the castings with glass frit until they were filled. In this case, because the castings were so big, it took three to four weeks to anneal the castings (to relieve stress) and then slowly bring the molds/castings back down to room temperature. When the castings were out of their molds, I lightly ground the surfaces to insure they were very smooth, then sandblasted the castings and put an oil finish on them.

I don’t sign my large-scale pieces because they are in the public record, so the institutions that have them usually put a plaque or marker with the name of the piece and the year it was installed, as well as my name. I don’t want my signature to detract from the piece. I’m just happy doing the projects. Often, at the beginning of my career I would actually forget to sign them, and then after a while not having the signature on the art piece became the norm for me.

I used to sketch my sculptures before making them, which is what I did when designing “Messenger.” As you can see when you look at the sculpture, it feels slightly like a two-sided piece. As I worked more in the large-scale public art realm, I started creating 3D miniatures for sculpture proposals, either with cardboard, foam core or mixed materials that I would super glue together just to get the rough idea for them. Then I would make a maquette [A maquette is a scale model for a larger piece of sculpture, created to visualize how the piece may look. In a way, a maquette in sculpture is what a sketch is in painting] for the presentations, out of small gauge steel, at about a 1”:1’ scale. I just found that working in this manner helped me produce a better “in the round” sculpture design."