VICKSBURG VOLTRI is a site-specific installation series of found-object sculptures, created inside the former powerhouse of the 400,000 sq ft Lee Paper Mill, during my 6 weeks at Prairie Ronde Artist Residency. Inspired by the materials, surroundings, and history of the Mill itself, the work is a riff on sculptor David Smith’s frenetic month spent working in Voltri, Italy in 1962, where he was given access to an abandoned steel factory, and spent his days “drawing in space” with whatever materials he found there. In this same fashion, I turned a roughly 5000 sq ft former turbine hall into a welding shop, spent 2 weeks gathering materials, scrap metal and concrete rubble with rebar tentacles jutting out, and began creating metal drawings in space. Playing with form and shadow, and utilizing wasted materials as talismanic artifacts, I created over 80 individual artworks, and continue to make more works with these materials in-studio, as David Smith did with his Voltri-Bolton series.