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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
"Sanctuary" by Jim Robertson
"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 mostly self-taught multi-media artist and an arts educator, Molzberger started a studio in Wendland, Germany, in 1982, and mounted his first museum exhibition in 1991. His works have been shown throughout Israel, France, Netherlands, Poland, U.S. and Russia. In 1993, he founded Atelierhaus (“studio house”) Hilmsen, a professional arts and humanities residency and nonprofit organization in Hilmsen, Germany (a small hamlet located 10 miles outside the charming medieval town of Salzwedel), after acquiring a plot of land which included a 1906 Gothic farmhouse and several very large dilapidated barns—to be perfect for creating large scale sculpture. While in Hilmsen, he enjoys conducting workshops and engaging with the local community through various programs, and during the academic season, he is an Artist Affiliate at Houston Christian University. Molzberger was a True North artist with the Texas-themed (and sized) sculpture “Retired Cowboy Clown” in 2015. Molzberger’s behemothic and deadly serious “Mantis with Saddle” traveled the seas from Germany to its spot in True North 2026, and a version of this sculpture (titled “Für Walter”) is situated on the grounds of the renowned 13th century Mönchkirche (Monk’s Church) Salzwedel, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. 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. Alone with every need. Such a life demands specialization. Extreme adaptation. A focused, sometimes ruthless existence. The praying mantis has chosen this path. It survives through invisibility. Through patience. Through precision. Its body resembles the plant world more than the animal world. It dissolves into its surroundings. It becomes absence. And then—it waits. Motionless. Silent. Alert. Every movement in its environment is registered. Every vibration analyzed. A perfect system of observation. Of surveillance. Of readiness. Until—in a fraction of a second—stillness becomes action. Observation becomes strike. And life is taken.”
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’s works are often responsive to social, political and environmental issues that rankle or disturb, and she tends to inject perverse humor into the content as a strategy for easing the bitter pill. 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. Her 2026 offering, “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. Born in Michigan, Mouchaty earned a BS and MS from University of Alaska, Fairbanks, a Ph.D. in Genetics from Lund University, Sweden, and received a Junior Fulbright Fellowship to Sweden. After working decades in scientific 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. She has received grants and scholarships from University of Alaska, Lund University, The Glassell School of Art, Houston, Houston Arts Alliance and University of Houston School of Art. Her works have been shown, in part, at Mystic Seaport Museum, Connecticut, G Spot Contemporary Art Space, Houston, The Glassell School of Art, University of Houston-Downtown, Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Anya Tish Gallery, Houston, Bill’s Junk, Houston, Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, and The Lab, Adelaide, Australia.
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, Texas. 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, Phillips 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 it remains a magical experience today. Within the first year of his adventure in sculpture, his works were selected for several juried art shows. 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 carve the dead trees into public sculptures—Phillips was selected to carve the first pieces at Galveston City Hall, commissioned works followed, and the Galveston Tree Sculptures became a huge sensation. His works are scattered throughout Texas including Arlington, Baytown, Beeville, Calvert, College Station, El Lago, Fulshear, Galveston, Greenville, Hallettsville, Houston, Humble, Killeen, Lake Jackson, Missouri City, Montgomery, Nelsonville, Richmond, Santa Fe, Simonton, Spring, Tuleta and Weimar. His True North 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 Urbana-Champaign, and Thomas Walsh, a director of the graduate sculpture program at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. 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. Outside of his studio practice—supported by the Fulbright Scholar Program, CEC ArtsLink, and the Texas State University Research Program—Colombik and his wife, Jerolyn Bahm-Colombik, have worked for decades studying regions of the world that are transitioning to civil society— milieus where traditions and cultural heritage collide head-on with westernization and government malfeasance—including Burma, Armenia, Republic of Georgia, Indonesia and Ecuador. One of a series, “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 bring a sense of grace back to the fractured forest and a sense of resilience in individual will. Most importantly, it is a reflection that beauty can blossom in the wake of adversity.”
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”—an old, galvanized metal wash basin filled to the brim with clean, clear, amber, green and blue shards of broken glass bottles he had painstakingly collected from City parks over the course of a year. For his NYU Fellowship, Nelson established and ran a public art project called GLASSfreeGROUNDS (GfG)—creating 36 workshops held at City parks where children and adult participants painted and decorated a thousand GfG art buckets and then used 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 installation “MARBLEOUS GfG BUCKET CORRAL” is composed of 80 of these buckets, inviting us to study each bucket’s unique 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. A multi-media artist, some of his exhibitions include Brownsville Museum of Fine Arts, “Extremely Short Film Festival,” Aurora Picture Show, Houston (Best of Show), G Spot Contemporary Art Space, Houston, Mother Dog Studios, Houston, Project Row Houses, Houston, The Art Car Museum, Houston, “The Big Show,” Lawndale Art Center, Houston, and he received the Houston Community Activist, Environmental Excellence Award, from Citizen’s Environment Coalition, 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. Born in Williamston, North Carolina, Barber was raised on a farm near the Roanoke River in Martin County. He earned his BFA from East Carolina University, MFA from University of Arizona, and has gained notoriety as a sculptor working in a variety of media. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship and the Southern Arts Federation/NEA Fellowship in Sculpture, and has held exhibitions at Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art, Auburn, Alabama, Redbud Arts Center, Houston, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, New York, and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Japan. His head-turning sculpture 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 "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 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, Colombik 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 Houston high school, he joined the Army and served our country for three years—two of those in Vietnam. After returning to the states, he earned a BFA from University of Houston and an MFA from University of Texas, Austin. His education and art career began in painting and drawing, and his works have been shown in numerous galleries and museums, including Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. While continuing to paint, his interests gradually turned toward three-dimensional works. In the early 1990s, he took metal working classes at The Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 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.” His works are figurative and evolve from one or two “starter” pieces, where he begins selecting or modifying more pieces to reinforce the original theme suggested by the starter piece. He says, “A few subjects reoccur in my work: surrealistic vehicles, fanciful weapons, animals and architectural structures.” Other works are conceived from scratch, without found objects—non-objective and more formal in nature—using readily available steel material, such as “Zig Zag,” his bright teal, monolithic sculpture for True North 2022. Robertson was Professor of Art at Lone Star College for 29 years, retiring in 2009. He has a full-time studio in Trinity and is often spotted cruising the art car scene in his sleek and futuristic stainless steel creation, Jet Car. Following his lifelong passion for architecture, "Sanctuary" is a mashup of architectural icons—Egyptian pyramids, Gothic pointed arches and towering minarets. With its almost ghostly translucence, the artist has chosen bright teal to pop against its natural background.
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 mostly 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 longtime friend, Mark “Scrapdaddy” Bradford, and his legion of fantastical, mechanical creations, as well as his collaboration on several sculptural works with Houston mosaic artist and good friend, Chris Silkwood, including their public art installations “Dazy Mae,” Art on Longpoint, Redbud Arts Center, Houston, and “Flower Power”—created from an industrial venting fan, metal salvage and glass mosaic—for True North in 2016.
Damon Thomas’s clay works are hand built using stiff slabs and hand-formed coils—intentionally leaving traces of hand building and other “imperfections” in the clay. His style is an abstracted realism that generally follows human proportion from which he freely deviates. He often combines his sculptures with found objects that 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 (his family later moving to the East End where he grew up), Thomas was drawn back to the neighborhood in 1996. He earned a B.A. from University of Houston, an M.A. 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. Current and more recent exhibitions include “Kirk & David,” The Jung Center, Houston (through 10.31.26), “Off the Box,” Glassell Studio School, “Texas Dimensional: Fine Art In Three Dimensions," San Antonio Art League + Museum, "Found & Made," Archway Gallery, Houston, "Altamira, Sculpture Month Houston,” Site Gallery, The Silos at Sawyer Yards, “Ancestors," The Jung Center, and True North was proud to exhibit his “meaningful and soulful” mixed media sculpture "Home Fire" in 2019.
Vincent Cianni
With their collaborative sculpture “Migrations,” Thomas creates rotating casts of three different species of winged creatures in fired clay, with multiple “migrations” over the duration of the exhibition—a flock of bright red birds in spring, a parliament of owls through summer and a colony of bats in time for Halloween. Crane’s 3-D puzzle-like tree form of oxidized steel and stainless steel carriage bolts gives creature comfort to, and a 360-degree view of, these ever-changing multitudes of 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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