There’s a new stone monolith at the Thomas Studio Patio. After the crew finished installing the new (old) open gazebo in the I decided to add a vertical limestone monolith with a bas relief of a Greater Snowy Egret from the cover illustration of a book that i have long admired, “Real Florida” by Jeff Klinkenberg. I was born and raised (sort of) in Miami Beach and spent my pre-teen years in Coconut Grove, south of Miami. The egret carving isn’t quite finished at this date.
November 27, 2010
New stone monolith at Thomas Studio Patio.
January 3, 2010
The Bloch Cancer Survivor Plazas
Sometime in the mid-1990s, Milosav Cekic, an Austin, Texas architect searching for an art foundry, called me to cast a series of bronze plaques for a group of Cancer Survivor Plazas that he was commissioned to design. The plazas were to be built adjacent to major medical centers in various cities at the request of Richard Bloch, founder of AOL and himself a cancer survivor. Milosav’s initial request for a few plaques led to our helping to build plazas in Houston, Texas; Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio and New Orleans, Louisiana.
The first plaza was built in Hermann Park in Houston across from M.D. Anderson Medical Center, a nationally known cancer treatment group. Milosav is, in my view, one of the finest draftsmen that I’ve ever worked with. He would start a concept conversation with me, all the while doodling with colored pencils on a pad of onionskin paper and before the conversation was over, he would arrive at a workable design concept.
we soon discovered a general concept…a central plaza with a gazebo, partially surrounded with low walls in an open C shape. The gazebo and surround would become a common part of most of the plazas with variations to reflect local culture, geography and biotics.