We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle O’Michael a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Michelle, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
My fundamental creative objective is bringing beauty and a welcoming environment to public art projects. My four-story sculptures, Flame d’Illuminacion in Arlington, Texas, Trust at Preston Plaza in Dallas, and my Guardian at Frisco’s Fire Station Six, are meaningful projects on several levels.
Uniting steel with beauty, I create art through precise steel-working methods. My work is about movement, form, scale and proportion. I use spirals and arches to illustrate life and nature, symbolizing life cycles from DNA to cosmic movement. I explore the interaction of mass, structure, space, and shadow in 720 degrees. An essential attribute of my sculptures is my distinct, three-dimensional calligraphy, the thick and thin quality of line. My art speaks to man’s primal response to beauty. Informed by desert skies, my objective with monumental sculptures is contemporary skyscapes piercing azure realms where objects breathe.
Public art commissions are always site specific with unique challenges. The challenges are part of what makes these big projects fun. My design work starts with the site. What is the invisible design-cube in which my work must fit? What is egress for eighteen wheelers during installation? What size crane or specialty lifting equipment is needed? How can I creatively address the objective of the client within these design parameters? What other restrictions or issues do I keep in mind during my design process? Each project always has unique technical features to be addressed in fabrication. These are long projects. One took seven years, another two, most at least a year. There are always unexpected, unplanned issues arising during fabrication, usually from changes made in the site by the commissioner during the process. In addition to developing the creative design, another personal benefit is the multiplicity of required skills in each project. Meeting with engineers, architects, a stadium lighting engineer, landscapers, construction and lighting crews, ad infinitum . . . expands my skills, adding fun variation from my usual daily routine.
Flammes d’Illuminacion, is my four, woven steel, computerized light-towers for the City of Arlington. My towers represent mankind’s continual, strength of spirit. They are functionally designed, stadium lighting for Arlington’s large public events, concerts, and festivals. I transformed generic light poles into full spectrum-color, computerized light obelisks. These monuments are lit daily to enhance public programs, programmed to tribute or celebrate specific events, as July 4th. As iconic landmarks, my towers speak with impressive stateliness for the City’s public gathering space between City Hall, a five-lane boulevard, and the Founders Park community festival space.
Initial challenges of Flammes d’Illuminacion were making them fit on a flatbed eighteen-wheeler, as light as possible for transportation and installation while insuring structurally-sound durability. The forty-foot lengths of the bands had not been woven before in my engineer-determined steel thickness. Before fabrication, they are flexible ribbons. Manipulating them was an issue. How to physically accomplish the weave fabrication took six weeks of collaborative planning. The PE Certification engineer only had one suggested change to my design. From this project I added consideration of wind-loading and wind generated harmonic stress in my design skillset. My willingness to learn different skills, like some engineering, or foundation structural requirements, is an attribute allowing me to take on these major projects. Other qualities are demanding the highest quality of myself, my team, material quality and techniques.
In my Guardian sculpture at Fire Station 6 in Frisco, Texas my objective is honoring Firefighters. I designed an abstracted figurative form to speak directly to them and the community. The core concept is the duality of strength and vulnerability. Every design element and material was selected to address this. Firefighters daily risk their lives to protect what is precious to them and the community. The Guardian was made to resist prairie winds, on a small budget, short timeline with low-maintenance Corten®, stainless steel, and glass. It was commissioned by and is in the City of Frisco, Texas collection. The City’s Public Art Manager said: O’Michael is the ideal public artist in she is so collaborative.
The Guardian is an inverted obelisk. Traditionally an obelisk is a four-sided stone pillar tapering to a pyramidal top. I inverted the obelisk, making it an open, two-sided column supported by a spiral with a glass Fireman’s hat top. The obelisk represents the torso. Its inversion is symbolic of daily vulnerability of Firefighter’s lives, their fragility. The fact the obelisk stands in spite of its inversion is symbolic of their success in the face of danger.
The open obelisk represents the expansiveness of their duties. On the torso are Maltese cross cutouts from the Firefighter’s patch. The Maltese cross is an eight-pointed cross with each point symbolic one attribute: bravery, honor, duty, loyalty, dedication, helping the poor and sick and contempt of death. The sculpture is engineered to resist 80 mph tornado winds and prairie hailstorms with the cutouts decreasing wind pressure on the sculpture.
The spiral on the open side represents the fire hose, Staff of Asclepius: the traditional symbol of medicine, and a DNA coil signifying their essential service to community life and property. The coil is an important truss for structural stability. The red-brown color is Corten® steel formulated to oxidize as a protective coating. Corten® is muted red rust color; it references the safety red of fire trucks. This choice works attractively with green environments and for long-term maintenance.
The 600-pound laminated glass helmet refers to fragility in contrast to the safety of normal fire helmets. It refers to the risk of all firefighters daily, including their own lives. The symbols of fragility and the strength in the materials are a commentary on the bravery, dedication, training, character, commitment, and mission these courageous men and women daily give to the community.
Trust, a proposed twenty-five-foot sculpture was requested for the central traffic circle at a high-end shopping plaza remodeling project. After winning the commission as the artist, my visit to the plaza revealed an outstanding, fun, bustling, lively, range of stores and provided services. My concept is a triad representing the relationship between the plaza owners and vendors, customers, and me. It is about unity, collaborative and cooperative service.
The commissioners requested a twenty-five-foot sculpture. At my first site visit I observed the requested twenty-five feet did not rise above the oak trees surrounding the circle. At twenty-five feet, trees obscure the sculpture from most of the site. To remedy this, I designed and made a thirty-nine-foot sculpture.
With Trust, each element apparently moves from yet supports the other. Each sculptural element represents a torso symbolizing both venders and customers. It is symbolic of daily activity of the Plaza as well as the work of the venders for customer satisfaction. Thirty-nine feet tall centered in the round-about, Trust is beacon to all. The arched directionality of the bent obelisks represents the expansiveness of all our activities and demands of our lives with which the Plaza helps and serves.
The two-year process involved working with the Plaza owners, the Plaza property manager, my Houston-based engineers, coordinating with the commissioner’s, Dallas engineers, architect, landscape architect, Plaza general contractor, City of Dallas permitting, my certified industrial fabricators, my trucking company, the installation company, my art consultant and both a photographer and drone photographer. The sculpture is designed to resist 120 mph winds.
Michelle, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was raised in the West Texas Chihuahuan Desert, a place spotted with cacti, steel-rigs and ever-present winds. My art rises from youthful isolation of my family’s twenty-three square miles of land. It speaks with big-Texas sky inspiration, punctuated with steel and wind songs. My art began as a child painting with my avocational painter father. His father was an industrial blacksmith. I unite this divergent heritage in my steel art. My steel art speaks of contemporary skyscapes and open horizontal spaces where objects breathe.
My passion for art fed my desire to be an artist. I became a single parent before finishing my undergraduate degree. After that, my first priority was providing for my daughter. I could be a starving artist. I chose not to subject my child to it. All along my journey, I continuously made art and took classes at university and museum schools while working professionally in a field with less than 1% women. In an industry down-cycle and with an empty nest, I chose to transition to professional artist. In making this decision, my husband stated he would support me in any way he could. His dedication to my art is essential to my working in steel. I attribute part of my accomplishments in making monumental public art to my corporate experience: organizing production, meeting deadlines on time and in-budget. This background prepared me to be a collaborative artist.
Having started with painting, I moved to 3-D work in various mediums. In my first decade as a professional artist, I went to professional welding school where I found a artistic passion for the medium. I love working with fire, playing with fire, making a living with fire. (According to my husband, cooking with fire is not part of my skillset.)
Even now they are not all large, each welded sculpture got larger as steel’s versatility freed me. Steel’s potential is infinite. One can make a vase or a skyscraper. I quickly expanded from small to larger and larger sculptures. In 2000 for the International Sculpture Conference in Houston, Texas, I made La Mujer Roja, my first large-scale works, thirty-foot horizontal sculpture. Craig Hall of Hall Financial Group purchased it for his Texas Sculpture Garden in Frisco, Texas. This began my exploration in large-scale works in addition to smaller size pieces. It also established my presence in the Dallas Metroplex where I now have twelve large-scale, including five, monumental, four-story sculptures. I now have twelve large-scale, including five, monumental, four-story sculptures.
If starting over studying to be an artist, I would include engineering and architecture in addition to art studies. Professional artists, including painters, use math in the basics of creating artwork. Structure is basic to making sculpture.
My undergraduate degree is from University of Texas at Austin. In 2013, I was one of the first Master’s in Fine Art graduates from Houston Christian University’s MFA program. My work is currently represented by: Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas, Heidi Vaughn Gallery Houston, Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona and Museo Benini, Marble Falls, Texas.
My art is in collections and galleries: New York City to California; Mexico, Arab Emirates, Germany, Peru, and UK. My work is in private, international, and corporate collections. My major collected art is in Baylor Medical Foundation; Texas Sculpture Garden and Fire Station 6, Frisco, Texas; Embassy Suites in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Rogers, Arkansas and Norman, Oklahoma; Hall Winery and Andrew Lanes Winery Napa Valley, California, Hilmsen Art Institute in Germany. I have five monumental sculptures in the Dallas Metroplex, four of which are at City Hall and Founders Park, owned by the city of Arlington, Texas.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My objective is to bring beauty, inspiration and pleasure to the viewer. There are many other artists whose work address mankind’s suffering and politics. I derive much pleasure and satisfaction from designing and making up-lifting, aesthetically beautiful art. I am validated by people loving my art. As to what I want my art to do for others, take me out of the equation. Though I design and make my work, it is about their reaction, interpretation, and emotional response. What does it do for them? One person came to my studio to see a sculpture on which I was working. She loved it so much she cried. My work spoke to her in a way which I had not expected. In addition to what I receive from creating my art, people wanting it, their getting pleasure and feelings of well-being from my art, all makes me happy. Also, it supports me and my family. Being an instrument contributing to people’s pleasure and happiness, how great is that?
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
My objective is to bring beauty, inspiration and pleasure to the viewer. There are many other artists whose work address mankind’s suffering and politics. I derive much pleasure and satisfaction from designing and making up-lifting, aesthetically beautiful art. I am validated by people loving my art. As to what I want my art to do for others, take me out of the equation. Though I design and make my work, it is about their reaction, interpretation, and emotional response. What does it do for them? One person came to my studio to see a sculpture on which I was working. She loved it so much she cried. My work spoke to her in a way which I had not expected. In addition to what I receive from creating my art, people wanting it, their getting pleasure and feelings of well-being from my art, all makes me happy. Also, it supports me and my family. Being an instrument contributing to people’s pleasure and happiness, how great is that?
Contact Info:
- Website: https://omichael.com
- Instagram: O’Michael Studios, Inc.
- Facebook: Michelle OMichael
- Linkedin: Michelle O’Michael
- Youtube: Michelle O’Michael Videos
Image Credits
Images provided by O’Michael Studios, Inc., Michelle O’Michael