FALON MIHALIC

ARTIST STATEMENT 2026

I am a sculptor based in Texas working in ceramics, painting, and environmental installation. I take ephemeral natural systems and hidden ecologies like local weather and water bodies and I give them form by mapping, making, and building their fleeting qualities into permanent sculptures and paintings. My studio is my laboratory where I push material fluency in ceramics, glass, and pigments to understand their miraculous color effects. By rigorously testing the moody and emotional qualities of my materials, I know how to use them to transform how we experience color and light, and then the world around us.

I’m often trying to convince a rigid material into a kind of flow state: a precise resin wave, a perfect color gradation in polycarbonate, or a steel structure that feels light.

My projects ask questions about how our feelings of wonder are intertwined with the natural world. I am inspired by magical realism and science fiction literary genres for the ways that they imagine a reality that feels like it’s at the edge of possibility. I am interested in the concept of deep time and how atmosphere, terrain, climate, and plants speak to us across time scales in geologic, biologic, and hydrologic cycles.

As a licensed landscape architect, my training in landscape ecology is a lens like a magnifying glass. Within this lens, I see how the ecological connections and histories embedded in places makes them special.

My public art commissions tell the stories of fluctuating patterns and hidden ecologies. With my monumental artworks, I am revealing hidden ecological qualities and placing them at the forefront of the public’s imagination.