HALOS was born when Mel took a defunct satellite dish down from the roof of his new home; a fixer upper in the canyon. Inspired by an antique carved wood lintel of the Balinese guardian god Bhoma on loan from a traveling artist-friend and cast off plaster life masks of real people created by his father-in-law, a professional make-up artist, Mel married a Maka face to the nimbus shaped dish creating a new kind of guardian - a “Halo".

Mel’s MAKA faces are sculpted clay with oxides applied to the surface and single-fired in his Skutt KMT-1227 kiln. He uses a variety of clays including, his current favorite, paper clay.

His discarded and repurposed dishes come from friends and family across the Los Angeles area. He alters the dishes with a plamsa cutter and treats them with a variety of materials including fabric, molding paste, polyurethane foam, paint, sand, stones, shells, glass shards, rusty nails and found objects.

HERALDS began in Baja Mexico when Mel found a child’s wooden shoe last at a flea market. The wooden last followed Mel around for a decade sitting on his bedside table. As an offshoot of the Halo project, Mel used the discarded metal from a satellite dish to sculpt wings for the foot. He then etched and burned design elements into the wood and added brass ball bearings and cut glass. Ruby’s Flying Foot was the first in Mel’s continuing Heralds series.

The CAVALI sculptures in honor of the Year of the Fire Horse are based on Mel’s photographs of the horses in the canyon that pass by the studio every day. The Cavalis are sculpted clay with oxides and glazes fired at cone six. They are named after famous horses like Alexander the Great’s horse Bucepahlus, Napoleon Boneparte’s grey Arabian Marengo and Don Quixote’s horse Rocinante.

Mel hopes that his upcycling of these abandoned dishes and found objects into Halos, Makas, Cavali and Heralds will inspire those within the guardian’s gaze to envision and work towards a sustainable future.