MARCELLA: A STORY IN THE ROUND

Concept

Marcella: A Story in the Round is a proposal for a monumental site-specific sculpture at the entrance roundabout of Marcella in Deer Valley.

Inspired by the history of the Mayflower Mine, the work transforms the site's mining heritage into a contemporary sculptural landscape where bronze, natural stone, mature trees and alpine planting become one integrated composition.

Rather than commemorating history through a traditional monument, the proposal creates a new landmark that acknowledges the past while looking toward the future.

The Sculpture

The composition unfolds as visitors move around the roundabout, revealing a series of interconnected moments rather than a single front-facing monument.

Major sculptural elements include:

• Three pack mules accompanied by a miner

• A timbered mine portal with rail and ore cart

• Five working miners engaged in different tasks

• A monumental bull elk

• A buck, doe and fawn

• A monumental weathered timber cast entirely in bronze

Each element contributes to a larger narrative about labor, endurance, wildlife and the relationship between people and landscape.

Bronze and Landscape

The defining idea behind the proposal is the integration of sculpture and landscape.

Bronze figures, animals and the monumental timber emerge directly from natural stone, mature evergreen trees and native alpine planting.

There is no conventional pedestal.

The landscape becomes part of the sculpture.

The result is a work that changes with season, weather and light while remaining permanently rooted in the mountain environment.

Designed in the Round

The sculpture is conceived as a true 360-degree experience.

As visitors move around the roundabout, figures disappear behind stone, wildlife emerges through the trees, and the composition continually changes.

There is no single viewpoint.

The story unfolds through movement.

Artistic Approach

My work has long explored the intersection of landscape, labor and the mythology of the American West.

After years photographing Western landscapes using the nineteenth-century wet-plate collodion process, my practice has increasingly focused on figurative bronze sculpture.

This project brings those two bodies of work together, integrating sculpture with the landscape rather than placing sculpture within it.

Next Phase

The drawings and film presented here establish the narrative, visual language and overall composition.

The next phase would be the creation of a detailed scale clay model, allowing the sculpture, landscape and engineering to be developed collaboratively with the project team before moving into fabrication.

Vision

The goal is not to recreate Mayflower.

It is to create an enduring work of public art that acknowledges the history of the site while becoming part of Marcella's future.

A landscape with a memory.

Marcella deserves more than a monument. It deserves a landmark, one rooted in the history of this place while becoming part of its future.