Big Brass Bayou

Big Brass Bayou (2014) is site-specific artwork commissioned through Kinzelman Art Consulting for Baker & McKenzie, Houston. The custom sculpture fills 3 niches at 206 x 96 inches each and is made of acid cut brass with polished mirror finish.

Made of 91 pieces of mirror-polished brass, Big Brass Bayou is an abstracted montage of a meandering wetland. While the overall composition and imagery are products of the artist’s imagination, the general concept is, in part, motivated by Houston’s Buffalo Bayou and its native river plants and flowers.

The initial artwork was created in the studio out of hand-cut paper. The contoured imagery resulting from those paper silhouettes were electronically transferred into the computer for further development. Finished outlines were loaded into a 3D computer model and then physically fabricated out of highly polished brass sheeting. The actual metal cutting was done via photo-chemical etching, an acid-based process that cuts through the brass precisely without distortion. Each component was then hand polished and installed in this precise configuration.