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 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. My work is attuned to these elongated cycles that are geologic, biologic, and hydrologic.

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.