PROJECT TYPE: Public Art Commission
LOCATION: Bank of America Tower in downtown Houston, Texas
CLIENT AND COLLABORATORS: Skanska Development Corporation, Grace Zuninga Creative Director at Sawyer Yards
COMPLETED: 2019
Rain is an installation of a large scale painted water body with glistening rain drops. It’s created from layers of paint and pure pigment on a 20’ x 12’ wall. Acrylic sculptures welded from mirrored acrylic sheet create three dimensional prismatic water beads.
The work was inspired by Houston’s dramatic rainstorms in the summer months. The work is made to be experienced from a variety of vantage points. The mirrored acrylic sculptures are multidimensional at different angles and seem to change shape when passing by. Viewed straight-on, the blue mirrors reflect back but with a blue overtone as if underwater.
Photography by Paul Hester
Project Type: Immersive Light Art Installation, Data Driven Light Art with Projection Mapping, Public Programming
Public Launch: April 24, 2021 at the Train Shed in Sawyer Yards
Partners: Project space provided by Sawyer Yards Arts Campus and supported in part by the Houston Arts Alliance and the Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs.
The Bayou Beacon is an environmental light sculpture that expresses water fluctuations of White Oak Bayou. This project uses water quality monitoring data to express water level and flow in a para-metrically designed light sculpture installed in the train shed at Sawyer Yards.
Houston’s bayous shape the city. The bayous fluctuate with varying levels of rainfall, but that action of moving and flowing stormwater is always happening in the background.
We designed the Bayou Beacon with the hope of bringing to light the inherent resilience of the bayous as highly functional green infrastructure.
Special Thanks
Many collaborators contributed to bringing this work to fruition. Fuko Nara, Assistant Designer at Falon Land Studio, led the creative coding and technology components as well as created the animation and hand-built the scaled model prototypes for previous iterations of the installation. Clint Allen, of New Aspect Design, consulted on the projection mapping, theater lighting components, and projection screen fabrication. Matt Felsen, independent creative technologist in Brooklyn, provided early technology consultation for the data expression design. Grace Zuninga, Creative Director at Sawyer Yards, provided the space to us and supported the marketing efforts for the event. Sara Van Buskirk and Jacob Spacek provided installation and de-installation assistance for custom built components. Projectors and lighting components provided by 4Wall.
#theBayouBeacon
Architecture Center Houston is proud to announce the exhibition Verdant Laboratory by Falon Mihalic opening Thursday, June 12, 5:30-7:30pm, and continuing through August 22, 2025.
Verdant Laboratory transforms the gallery into a speculative ecology—part science lab, part art installation—that tells the story of Houston’s wild and often overlooked landscapes.
Through large-scale mixed media drawings, sculptures, and a video projection, Mihalic explores the living systems that form Houston’s foundation. Houston is not just a city built on bayous—it is a bayou. Situated at the intersection of the Galveston Bay estuary and coastal prairie, Houston exists within a dynamic and powerful web of water, soil, and biodiversity.
The Abandoned Garden, an imagined ecology artwork by Falon Mihalic for Radio Tave in Meow Wolf Houston
Services: Design, fabrication, and install, 600 square foot sculptural mural completed 2024
Commissioned by Meow Wolf. Photos courtesy of Meow Wolf | Photo by: Kate Russell
Project Credits
Falon Mihalic, Lead Artist. Falon Land Studio
Creative Contributors
Sound Design
Installation Assistant
Senior Show Audio Designer
Creative Production Intern
Lighting Designer
Artist Liaison
Production Designer
Creative Production Coordinator
Show Coordinator
Creative Producer
Installation Assistant
Production Designer
Senior Manager, Creative Production
Project Type: Land Art Installation in collaboration with 45 musicians
Collaborators: Sydney Boyd, Brandon Bell, Doug Perkins, Kati Gullick, Claire Wagner
Partners: Moody Center for the Arts, Humanities Research Center at Rice University. With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities
Services Provided: design, fabrication, assembly, install
About the work: Hailed as “…the ultimate environmental piece” by The New York Times, Inuksuit is a concert-length (60-70’) work that brings musicians and community members together with the environment. The title refers to the Stonehenge-like markers used by the Inuit and other native peoples to orient themselves in Arctic spaces. Adams structured the rhythmic layers in the score to mimic these stone shapes, but undefined areas of the score also exist that allow individual interpretation of the music that reflects the sense of freedom conveyed in the work.
Scored for between nine and 99 percussionists playing drums, cymbals, gongs, glockenspiels, sirens, and a host of other instruments, the work creates a sonic landscape that surrounds the audience. Performers are widely dispersed and move throughout a large, open area. Audience members are encouraged to move freely around the performance area to discover their own individual listening points. The work is intended to expand our awareness of the never-ending music of the world in which we live, transforming seemingly vacant space into more fully experienced place.
About the composer: John Luther Adams (b. 1953) is one of America’s most-performed living composers. Having spent the majority of his adult life living in Alaska, his work is uniquely imbued with a heightened sense of eco-awareness. His orchestral work, Become Ocean, was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Writing in The New Yorker, critic Alex Ross described John Luther Adams as "one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century."
PROJECT TYPE: Public Art
LOCATION: Emancipation Park, Houston TX
SERVICES PROVIDED:
Concept development, design, project management, fabrication and installation
SIZE: 12’x4x’3’
Climate Pulse is an environmental light sculpture that responds to changes in temperature and humidity. Powered by 2400 programmed LED lights, the sculpture emits a glow of color based on ambient temperature. At high humidity levels, the lights sparkle to warn of impending rain. The artwork is sited in Houston’s Emancipation Park through winter of 2018. Climate Pulse was designed as a parametric sculpture with responsive lighting integrated into the structure of 88 ribs. The ribs are joined together to span 12 feet.
Climate Pulse is a public art project with support from the Houston Arts Alliance and the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs.
Collaborators:
Ross Wienert, Architectural Designer
Matt Felsen, Interactive Technologist
Mike Garman, Fabrication
Alluvial is a wall sculpture of colored porcelain and dry pigments installed for a Houston architectural office’s lobby.
TOPO is a living art installation commissioned for the new Outdoor Voices retail store in the Houston Heights Mercantile. Inspired by the Astrodome and Houston’s lush subtropical landscape, TOPO creates a living stadium of artificial turf with living plants.
Project Type: Public Art
2018
East End Esplanade. Houston, Texas
With support from the Kaboom Foundation Play Everywhere Challenge.
Partners: East End Management District, Cultura East End, East End Farmer’s Market
Playshapes is a set of extra large building shapes for kids to construct their own imaginative playspaces. The project had its debut at the 2018 Annual Pinata Fest, a celebration of artful large scale pinatas made by local artists. The Playshapes colors were chosen based on the previous year’s award-winning Pinata. The playshapes made from high density foam and covered in waterproof material that’s durable for outdoor use. This project is funded by a grant from the Kaboom Foundation as part of the Play Everywhere Challenge and produced in partnership with the East End Foundation.
Project Type: Permanent Public Art Commission
Completed 2020
Commissioning Agency: Houston Downtown Management District
Consultant and Fabrication Team: Craft Structural Engineering, Pfeiffer Electric, Robertson Surfacing, Flying Carpet Creative, Polk Street Studios’ Kelly O’Brien and Justin Hughes
Meander is a permanent public art installation in Downtown Houston’s Historic Market Square Park. Nestled under the live oak trees, it is a playable interactive piece evoking the meander of Buffalo Bayou.
PROJECT TYPE: Public Art Installation
LOCATION: Houston, Texas
SERVICES PROVIDED: Concept development, Art Direction, Studio fabrication and install, graphic design, radical cartography, public programming
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Color Clouds is a site specific public art installation that celebrates the unique skyscape over Houston. Made of polychrome mesh, the installation is inspired by the changing colors of storm clouds in Houston during the summer.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Color Clouds is part of my continuing development of immersive, colorful landscape spaces that reference local phenomena. I'm astonished by the deep blue that builds on the underside of thunderhead clouds as storms push over the city from the Gulf of Mexico. Late afternoon sunlight catches the upper wisps of these clouds and they reflect creamy pink and bright purple tones. As a public project, the installation serves as a gateway into the experience of cloudgazing in the city. #HouClouds
PROJECT TYPE: Public Art, Community Playground
LOCATION: BakerRipley Leonel Castillo Community Center, Houston Texas
SERVICES PROVIDED:
Concept development, project management, custom interactive sculpture design, site design, construction administration
SIZE: 3,000 square feet
Esquina de Musica is an interactive musical sculpture playground for kids at the Leonel Castillo Community Center in Houston, Texas. The playable instruments are custom created for the project.
Partnerships: Open Architecture Houston, BakerRipley, Greater Northside Management District
An invited public art proposal for a sculpture that creates an imagined oyster reef with cast oyster sculptures in terrazzo and resin. The oyster sculptures illuminate according to the nearby tidal changes in Galveston Bay.
PROJECT TYPE: Public Art Proposal
A night-time spectacle, Moon Mist is a light and water sculpture in the form of a crescent moon.
Invited proposal for Meow Wolf’s Las Vegas location. Magic Rocks is an interactive immersive artwork of fun, funky rocks.
Project Type: Landscape Architecture, Public Art, Idea Competition
Size: Varies by specific installation
Location: Calgary, Alberta Canada
Project Description:
The Pink Sink is a proposal to convert the lost space of a long and narrow highway median into a space for carbon sequestration and environmental public art. The primary design goal, "the SINK", is to remove carbon dioxide from the air near the highway. The secondary design goal, "the PINK", marks the space of the carbon sink median by painting the curbs, and installing pink light posts that make environmental data visible to the public. Carbon is removed from the atmosphere through planting and soil amelioration strategies: 1) the mix of plants are selected for the most e ective carbon storage pathways year-round and 2) biological charcoal (aka biochar) is added to the soil as an amendment to increase carbon storage in the ground. These strategies are based on how plants take in carbon dioxide and use it for photosynthesis and how plant communities, together with soils, e ectively store carbon. The planting strategy is informed by Great Plains Prairie and Boreal Conifer Forest functions but does not exactly replicate those ecosystems. Instead, it is a hybrid "Piney Grassland" constructed for success in the urban realm and to take advantage of the best carbon storage mechanisms of both ecosystem types. The curbs around the median are painted bright pink to clearly mark the site with a bold line. Pink light posts create a landmark and provide data that teaches the public about how much carbon is sequestered onsite.
A public art competition proposal, Prospect Refuge creates an interactive sculpture and plaza in the heart of the city.
Invited Public Art Proposal
Washington DC General Services Department
An invited proposal for a public art piece for an elementary school in Washington, DC. A slice of Earth references the specific geology of the Piedmont region foothills meeting the Atlantic Ocean. The mosaic is made of smalti glass.
A public art competition proposal, Prospect Refuge creates an interactive sculpture and plaza in the heart of downtown Austin, Texas. We utilized our previous climate art prototype work to devise strategies for interactive lighting with addressable LEDs. The Prospect Refuge creates a fun immersive space for hanging out and passing the time with friends.
Invited Proposal, Public Art
Baltimore, MD
For the Harbor Point Bridge Concept designs, we imagined several concepts for an integrated artistic bridge wall.
Project Type: Public Art Installation, Interactive Art, Digital Media
Project Description:
Flow and Glow is an interactive art installation inspired by the geology of Texas Hill Country springs. Designed and installed to mimic large boulders in the headwaters of Central Texas rivers, the installation glows from underneath. The glow is activated by flows of people. As crowds stream around and through the installation, the glow of the boulder sculptures changes colors.
PROJECT TYPE: Public Art, Urban Plaza Design
LOCATION: Baltimore, Maryland
SERVICES PROVIDED:
Concept design, invited proposal as short-listed artist team for Baltimore's Public Art-in-Transit Red Line Project
COLLABORATOR:
Graham Coreil-Allen of Graham Projects
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The project combines large, brightly lit iconic symbols with colorful walkways leading transit users from the Red Line station mezzanine towards their neighborhood’s most significant sites. The inspiration for Poppleton Paths came from our experience walking the neighborhood and seeing embedded footprints and handwriting in patched and newly-poured concrete sidewalks. Deliberately made by residents over the decades, the acts of physically marking the ground traces personal histories of place. It is with that intention that we want to represent the movement of people from the Poppleton station to meaningful neighborhood locations.
Poppleton Paths is a visually striking, walkable map that accomplishes three goals: embraces community-based symbolism, highlights pedestrian movement through color and references the local watershed with integrated drainage structures.
