Jet Kiss

THE SCULPTURE: Jet Kiss, a colossal sculpture by artist Mike Ross comissioned by the City of Seattle. Two Vietnam-era A4 Skyhawk jets have been taken apart and put together like origami folding cranes.

THE TASK: Thirty jet segments must be moved by crane without a scratch

THE SOLUTION: Special carriages had to be built for each piece to be painted. Each piece required a crane to move, yet could not be scratched once the paint was applied. This requires a tremendous amount of focus and concentration for each move.

THE RESULT: Due to be unveiled this year

Coachella's Robot T-Rex

THE CLIENT: Coachella Music Festival

THE PROBLEM: Life-sized can-eating robotic T-Rex is behind schedule

Johnny Amerika was in trouble. He was building a life-sized, hydraulic T-Rex to eat and crush the cans at the 2012 Coachella Festival. But he was behind schedule.

THE SOLUTION: I grabbed my safety gear and drove to the southern California desert where we forwent sleep to finish the colossus before the weekend opening. The T-Rex was a hit, encouraging participants to toss their recycling into its jagged metal maw.

RESULT: Giant Metal-Mashing Success

Art By The Ton

THE CLIENT: Big Art Studios, Oakland

THE PROBLEM: Big art is big.

THE SOLUTION: Working with colossal or monumental sculpture is a paradox: Your pieces are so big they must be moved with heavy machinery, yet, the usual care must be observed. While working as a fabricator and wrangler on these sculptures, I also served as interim warehouse manager of a six-acre, 154-client artist's warehouse. This required me to do everything from streetsweeper repair to interacting with the City of Oakland.

Dan Das Mann's Sand By The Ton

THE PROBLEM: Party promoter needs 200 tons of sand to make a beach in his warehouse

THE SOLUTION: Modified and operated heavy machinery to load sand (sometimes amid throngs of partygoers). Wrangled 50-ft woman. Installed indoor pools. Ensured compliance with fire code. Repaired forklifts. Swept.

THE RESULT: Success two years in a row

Life-Sized Mousetrap

THE SCULPTURE: Fifty-thousand-pound life-sized copy of a popular board game.

THE TASK: Assemble, operate, and disassemble... repeatedly

Life Size Mousetrap





See a video of the Mousetrap here:

Giant Globes

From 2006 to 2009 I worked for Giant Globes, Inc. as a metalworker/polisher working on large (3'-10' diameter) aluminum globes. This is an exacting task, as a perfect sphere is hard to make but even the untrained eye can detect a lopsided one!


Making these globes has pushed me to produce metalwork that justifies its price. The uniformity of an unpainted, raw aluminum globe has challenged my precision more than my usual style of rugged, post-apocalyptic work.