When the cactus I made in high school broke this past summer, I put it back together with some good ol' two-part epoxy. As I was doing so, I decided I'd really like to revisit the cactus form. This time I wanted to make ceramic cacti as tall as me. And since installation art has become a core part of my practice in recent years, I decided to compose a proposal for an installation that incorporated the life-size ceramic cacti I wanted to build. Below is the proposal I created:

As one can tell from reading the proposal, it was written for a specific reader. I produced this proposal for Marianna Stark, a champion of the arts in the Bay Area who attended my high school and who had recently opened a gallery dedicated to installation art. I was understandably excited when I received the following response from Marianna:

Ever since I began working with clay I've been increasing the scale of my work. For whatever reason, my natural inclination with clay is to make large sculptures. I suppose this tendency derives from a curiosity to test my limits, to gauge my skill. The larger I work, the better my decision-making and technique have to be. I'm no mechanical engineer, so I can't explain this phenomenon using any technical jargon, but I can tell you from hands-on experience that gravity becomes a bigger thorn in my side as I add more height and weight to a sculpture.

In the past few years, I've noticed several growing trends in the design of domestic and consumer fashion products. Notable among these is the propagation of the cactus; from canvas totes decorated with cute, hand-drawn barbary figs to light fixtures made to resemble tall saguaros, cacti are everywhere in everyday design. Being the self-conscious hipster that I am, I typically try to steer clear of overdone tropes in art and design, but I like cacti too, dammit. I had made a ceramic cactus as a junior in high school (pictured below). I displayed this vibrant cactus bursting out of a broken speaker. This piece was part of my first sculptural series ever, a manifestation of my earliest apocalyptic fantasies, which explored how nature might overcome manmade technology in a post-human world.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the gallery is going to be making it to a second year. Alas, I am charging ahead! Not only have I secured the 5000lbs of sand needed to make the beach (thanks to a friendly Craigslister), I have also begun producing the ceramic elements needed for the installation, from the life-size cactus pictured at the top of the page to the small cactus teapot pictured to the right.