Week One
The Galveston Bay Foundation and I started talking about this commission in November 2025. They have waited patiently for my schedule to open up. Today I start.
Last spring I visited their new building and took images and measurements of the wall. It is a beautiful building, and it is not symmetrical. The piece is for the big space in the middle. The peak is a little over 16 feet. The wall is a little over 14 feet wide. The surprise is that the peak doesn't sit over the center of the wall. It sits to the left.
The first decision is size. I'm going with a diptych: two panels, each 6 feet wide and 10 feet tall. The piece will hang above the electrical outlet. It will not read as a diptych. The ecosystem will flow from one panel into the next.
The peak feels off center to me. To balance the off-center peak, I'm making the top edge of the piece free form instead of straight. The building made the first compositional choice. I'm answering it.
Quick sketch of possible free form too.
I have cut and glued the Stonehenge paper to make the panels. The paper comes in 50-inch rolls, so each panel needs a seam. I didn't want a straight glued line running down the middle of each one. So I tore the paper in soft curves and joined those edges, hoping the lines will work their way into the composition.
The first step of letting go is the first tear.
I'm curious how I will compose a piece for an organization that touches so many ecosystems. I want to tell all the stories, but the space is limited: 10 feet by 12 feet.
Knowing this piece was coming, I've kept my eyes peeled for interesting compositions and color combinations. One has really stuck with me: George Bellows' Evening Blue (Tending the Lobster Traps, Early Morning), 1916, oil on panel. It's in American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection at the MFAH, which opens today and runs through January 18, 2027. It appealed to me because this piece has to do a lot of things for the foundation. I need migrating birds like sandhill cranes that come for the fields. I need the marshes. I need places for egrets, ibis, and pelicans. I need different habitats, all in one piece. Bellows holds a whole coastline in a single view: the bluff and trees up close, the water in the middle, the far shore at the back. Each layer is its own place, and they still read as one world.
Tomorrow the two panels go up on the wall. I hope these seams work out.
