Llano Earth Art Fest

06/21/2025

Follow along @ Richard Shilling currently creating beautiful backlit tapestries with leaves and thorns! 😮

06/21/2025

Catch these two at The European Land Art Festival July 15th-20th in Dunbar. Gravity Glue & Richard Shilling @ European Land Art Festival

Notes on collaboration:

I don’t often do it in my personal work, as I typically find it difficult enough attempting to beatmatch my own internal chaos with the unpredictable flow of nature in ways that satisfy my strict aesthetics.. however there are always exceptions to rules, and occasionally my friend is one of them.

Where my insanity is stonebalancing, his is equally leaf manipulation, among other things.

I’ve been using leaves w/ balances as far back as I can remember in boulder creek, but that was very spontaneous in the moment, picking a leaf out of the water as it flowed by me and placing on the rocks in specific ways.

Here however, the balance itself took me roughly 2 days to realize, not because of difficulty as much as intuitive aesthetic standard. While the small lattice of leaf woven hex’s took Richard a similar amount of time on its own.

Here’s where the universe seemed to thread things together. We both worked on our parts independently, from our own individual perspectives, with the abstract intent to blend elements. I didn’t know what pattern he would render, and he had no idea what pattern I would render. Our common knowledge was the specific site selection. Which we agreed, needed to have an overhead tree to potentially tie whatever leaf structure to with fibers of a local plant.

Once I landed on the hagstone centerpiece, it resonated to a point of feeling impossible to backtrack, and I imagine the same for his part, as the meticulous nature of his leaf shapes is far beyond the detailed insanity of most humans.

It’s fair to say each of our parts were complete on their own, but formed a vibrant synergy in relation to each other. The shapes and complimentary negative space flowed with perfect precision.

There was an ever present risk that the rocks could collapse and totally obliterate the leaf structure, but we seized the opportunity to explore the curiosity like full grown children.

This is from a timelapse. I decided my favorite pod to light up was this one, and it spontaneously matched with one of Richard’s goofiest poses 🐙😂

More details to come.. !

05/29/2025

05/06/2025

Enjoy this Amazing LEAF art by Richard Shilling !

04/12/2025

A big shout out to Charlies Store, Inc. for their continued support of LEAF. We couldnt do it without them. Stop in and see all of their furniture, appliances and fabulous gift items.

04/10/2025

Thank you Buttery Co for your sponsorship and long time support of LEAF

04/07/2025

Thank you Down Horn Ranch for sponsoring LEAF 🌿 this year! If you need a cabin, RV or camping ⛺️ spot they have you covered!