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press release
on Exhibit
March to December
True North 2026
We are very proud to present True North 2026, the project's 13th installation! Filled once again with eight magnificent sculptures by prominent Texas artists, we hope you'll visit the project soon to experience the new and diverse mix of works, featuring:
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Hans Molzberger, "Mantis with Saddle" (400 block)
Suzette Mouchaty, "Folly in the Park" (600 block)
James D. Phillips, "beyond reach" (800 block)
Roger Colombik, "Bloom" (900 block)
Mark Nelson, "MARBLEOUS GfG BUCKET CORRAL" (1200 block)
Robbie Barber, "Goddard Nomad V" (1300 block)
Jim Robertson, "Sanctuary" (1600 block)
Keith Crane/Damon Thomas, "Migrations" (1800 block)
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Donna Bennett, Dean Ruck, Gus Kopriva
Chris Silkwood and Kelly Simmons
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"Mantis with Saddle" by Hans Molzberger
"Mantis with Saddle" by Hans Molzberger
"Migrations" by Keith Crane / Damon Thomas
"Mantis with Saddle" by Hans Molzberger
Kolanowski Studio
in sculpture order of s-n
Hans Molzberger
HOUSTON / HILMSEN, GERMANY
"Mantis with Saddle"
Hans Molzberger was born in Höhr-Grenzhausen in Germany’s Rhineland region where his family has lived and worked in the manufacture of industrial ceramics for many generations. A multi-media artist and an arts educator, Molzberger started a studio in Wendland, Germany, in 1982, and mounted his first museum exhibition in 1991. In 1993, he founded Atelierhaus (studio house) Hilmsen, Germany, a professional arts and humanities residency and nonprofit organization, and during the academic season, he returns to Houston as an Artist Affiliate at Houston Christian University. Molzberger was a True North artist in 2015 with the Texas-themed (and sized) sculpture “Retired Cowboy Clown.” This year’s behemothic and deadly serious “Mantis with Saddle” has traveled the seas from Germany to its spot on Heights Boulevard. Molzberger tells us, “Insects mirror us with astonishing clarity. Some live in perfectly organized societies—ants, bees—highly structured, highly cooperative, the individual absorbed into the whole. Others live alone. No division of labor. No shared responsibility. Only themselves. The praying mantis has chosen this path. It survives through invisibility. Through patience. Through precision. Motionless. Silent, Alert….”
Kolanowski Studio
2015
Gary Griffin
2016
"Retired Cowboy Clown"
Hans Molzberger
True North 2016
Suzette Mouchaty
HOUSTON TX
"Folly in the Park:
The Famous Adventure of the Enchanted Pole and Some Other Things Worth Knowing"
Suzette Mouchaty says, “Nature inspires awe, that sense of wonderment that brings us into the moment and helps us know our humanity.” Her colorful and enchanting “Monument to Sea Slugs” for True North 2024 shed light on one of the many phenomenal creatures of the sea facing extinction. Mouchaty’s 2026 work, “Folly in the Park: The Famous Adventure of the Enchanted Pole and Some Other Things Worth Knowing” is an abstraction of a microscopic aquatic organism—the hydra. This sculpture combines the form of the hydra with that of an emerging egg—a symbol of hope for the future. In this work she has magnified a creature so tiny as to be invisible into an imposing and charismatic form and mimicked the raucous patterns and enthralling colors of marine creatures to assert its presence. Mouchaty earned a BS and MS from University of Alaska, Fairbanks, a Ph.D. in Genetics from Lund University, Sweden, and a Junior Fulbright Fellowship to Sweden. After a long career in academia, she began her formal art studies at Art League Houston and Glassell Studio School, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, before earning an MFA from University of Houston School of Art.
2024
Kolanowski Studio
Kolanowski Studio
2024
"Monument to Sea Slugs"
Suzette Mouchaty
True North 2024
James D. Phillips
HOUSTON TX
"beyond reach"
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​During the week Sputnik was launched, James D. Phillips was born the fifth of six children to a Scotch-Irish father and Italian mother in Houston. Phillips says, “The extent of my art education included my mother, who taught me to draw as a child, and my middle and high school art teachers.” Fifteen years ago, after a 30-year hiatus from making art, he tells us he was cutting down a tree and began doodling with a chainsaw on the fallen trunk. As a recognizable form emerged from the log, he was amazed, and the experience remains magical for him today. Within a year of that fateful day, his works were being selected for juried art shows, and on a trip to Galveston to collect wood from the removal of trees killed by Hurricane Ike’s storm surge, he was introduced to a woman who wanted to turn the dead trees into public sculptures. Phillips was soon selected to sculpt the first works for Galveston City Hall, the Galveston Tree Sculptures went on to become a huge sensation, and his works can now be seen scattered throughout Texas. His True North 2026 sculpture “beyond reach” playfully depicts a giraffe, stretching hopefully for the sustenance of a nearby tree. Elements of the work—its head, tail and mane—represent the artist’s iconic woodcarvings, and the body’s composition reminds us of an instantly recognizable and nostalgic assembly of popsicle sticks.
Kolanowski Studio
Roger Colombik
WIMBERLEY TX
"Bloom"
Born and raised in Chicago, that City’s immense sculptural presence helped to define an understanding of the relationship between artist, community and public spaces for Roger Colombik. He also counts three mentors for building the foundation for his life in the arts and career in academia: Elliot Balter, a dynamic high school art teacher, Roger Blakley, a longtime professor at the School of Art and Design at University of Illinois, and Thomas Walsh, a director of the graduate sculpture program at Southern Illinois University. Colombik’s own distinguished 34-year career as professor and Sculpture Head at Texas State University, in turn, influenced and instilled talent and confidence in the lives of countless young artists. His True North 2026 sculpture “Bloom” engages the viewer in a constructive visual dialogue about our resilience and ability to bloom, as individuals and a society, after difficult circumstances. He tells us, “The genesis of the series was the aftermath of the 2022 ice storm that was particularly devastating to the Texas Hill Country’s cedar and oak groves. This body of work began as an attempt to return a sense of grace to the fractured forest and resilience in individual will. Most importantly, it is a reflection that beauty can blossom in the wake of adversity.” Colombik lives and creates art in Wimberley with his wife and artistic collaborator, Jerolyn Bahm-Colombik.
Kolanowski Studio
Mark Nelson
HOUSTON TX
"MARBLEOUS GfG
BUCKET CORRAL"
Mark Nelson
In the summer of 1994, after witnessing a terrifying close call involving his five-year-old son and some carelessly-discarded shards of glass in a public park near their home, Mark Nelson decided to do something to bring attention to and alleviate the chronic issue of dangerous glass debris lurking in public spaces where children and families gather to relax and play. That next year, at Art League Houston, he exhibited a sculptural work called “110 Lbs. of Park Glass,” and for his NYU Fellowship, Nelson established and ran a public art project called GLASSfreeGROUNDS (GfG)—creating 36 workshops held over time at City parks where children and adult participants painted and decorated a thousand GfG art buckets—then using them to gather broken glass. In 2000, 1,500 pounds of that glass were melted down at a marble making factory in Reno, Ohio, producing 180,000 cobalt blue “MARBLEOUS” marbles. His True North 2026 installation “MARBLEOUS GfG BUCKET CORRAL” is composed of 80 of these buckets, inviting us to study each piece’s unique and whimsical artwork and reflect upon the dangerous issue of illegal glass usage and litter in public spaces. Nelson earned his BFA at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, and MFA at University of Houston. Presently, he maintains his art practice and lives in the Heights with his wife, Maria.
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Kolanowski Studio
Robbie Barber
WACO TX
"Goddard Nomad 5"
As Professor of Art at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, Robbie Barber has taught Sculpture since 2000. His head-turning creation for True North in 2016 was titled “Stroll in the Park”—an oversized baby carriage made with welded steel and parts from an old trailer home. Barber says, “My architecture-related sculptures are influenced by my travels through rural America. I am attracted to the strong visual character of this country’s vernacular architecture. Vintage lap-board houses, mobile homes and agriculture-related structures have become regional icons that ultimately tell the stories of their inhabitants and builders. I often fuse these influences to create hybrid objects of fantasy, the results of which are often humorous, ironic or visually poetic in nature.” An example is this year’s sculpture, “Goddard Nomad V”—an out-of-this-world sculpture depicting a mobile home that has been transformed into a spacecraft of dubious reliability. The work is an homage to Robert Goddard—considered the father of modern rocketry—an American who invented the liquid propelled rocket by hand in the 1930s, leading to the Saturn V rockets that took us to the moon. After salvaging rocket thrusters previously used at the nearby White Sands Missile Range, Barber conceptualized and created the sculpture in 1991 during an artist residency in Roswell, New Mexico.
2016
Kolanowski Studio
Gary Griffin
2016
"Stroll in the Park"
Robbie Barber
True North 2016
Jim Robertson
TRINITY TX
"Sanctuary"
Rick Wells
Soon after Jim Robertson graduated from his high school in Houston, he served our country for three years—two in Vietnam—then earning his BFA from University of Houston and MFA from University of Texas, Austin. After a beginning in painting and drawing, his interests gradually branched out toward three-dimensional works, and in the early 1990s he took metal working at The Glassell School of Art, MFAH, welding at Lone Star College and began experimenting with steel and found metal objects. Robertson says, “I spent a lot of time cruising industrial salvage yards and had access to several dumpsters at metal fabrication shops.” A few subjects recur in his work: surrealistic vehicles, fanciful weapons, animals and architectural structure. Other works are conceived from scratch, without found objects, non-objective and more formal in nature, using readily available steel material. An example of this was “Zig Zag,” his bright teal, monolithic sculpture for True North in 2022. His True North 2026 sculpture "Sanctuary" is a creative mashup of architectural icons—Egyptian pyramids, Gothic pointed arches and towering minarets. With its almost ghostly translucence—especially from a distance—the artist has chosen bright teal to shimmer against its natural background. Robertson was Professor of Art at Lone Star College for 29 years and has a full-time studio in Trinity. He’s often spotted cruising the art car scene in his sleek and futuristic stainless steel creation, Jet Car
2022
Kolanowski Studio
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Kolanowski Studio
2022
"Zig Zag"
Jim Robertson
True North 2022
Keith Crane /
Damon Thomas
HOUSTON TX
"Migrations"
A self-taught outsider artist, Keith Crane loves sifting through metal salvage yards and “junk” stores for those diamonds in the rough that may one day become the catalyst for a new creation. Using those found treasures—binding elements together through welds and fastenings—he has been creating otherworldly- and botanical-esque works since the 90s, and you may just stumble upon one around the Heights in the gardens and homes of friends and collectors. His creative curiosity was piqued early on by an artistic aunt who used metal as a primary medium and later inspired by the vibrant art scene in Houston and the quirky, art-centric nature of the Heights neighborhood where he’s lived since 1988. He was further inspired by the incomparable Houston artist and friend, Mark “Scrapdaddy” Bradford, and his legion of fantastical, mechanical creations, and has enjoyed sculptural collaborations with Houston mosaic artist and longtime friend, Chris Silkwood, including “Flower Power” for True North in 2016—created from an industrial attic fan, metal salvage and glass mosaic.
Damon Thomas hand builds his clay works using stiff slabs and hand-formed coils—intentionally leaving traces of hand building and other “imperfections” in the surface. True North was proud to exhibit his warm and meditative sculpture, “Home Fire,” in 2019—a work of clay logs and steel flames. His style is an abstracted realism that generally follows human proportion from which he freely deviates, and he often combines clay sculpture with found objects which carry their own stories. Thomas says “My artwork, like me, is often called quiet; I am drawn to glazes and surfaces that quieten and unify the pieces. I hope that my art is soulful and meaningful. If it is, then I have accomplished what I set out to do as an artist.” Born in the Heights, and growing up in the East End, he was drawn back to the neighborhood in 1996. Thomas attended High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Houston, earned a BA from University of Houston, an MA from University of Texas at Austin, and holds a Certificate of Achievement in Ceramics from The Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “Kirk and David” (pictured with Damon) is on exhibit at The Jung Center, Houston, through 10.31.26.
Vincent Cianni
With their collaborative sculpture “Migrations,” Damon Thomas creates rotating casts of creatures in glazed and fired clay—changing seasonally over the duration of the exhibition. A flock of bright red birds in spring. A parliament of owls through summer. A colony of bats for fall…and Halloween. Another delightful critter for winter. Keith Crane’s 3-D puzzle-like tree form of welded, oxidized mild steel and stainless steel carriage bolts gives creature comfort to, and a 360-degree view of, these multi-changing inhabitants.
2019
"Home Fire"
Damon Thomas
True North 2019
Gary Griffin
2016
Gary Griffin
"Flower Power"
Keith Crane / Chris Silkwood
True North 2017
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