Human Element By Collin Townsend Velkoff

Conceptual sculptures that explore humanity’s reliance on nature.

Multidisciplinary artist Collin Townsend Velkoff creates artworks that focus on materials, form, and perception. With the Human Element series, he explores the relationship between humanity and nature. More specifically, the series of sculptures aims to capture humanity’s dependency on the environment and its materials. To create the artworks, Collin Townsend Velkoff developed a sand casting technique which also became an important part of the series. The artist casts cement forms onto stone before enveloping the two elements into sand. After the cement sculptures cure and connect to the organic base, he removes the sand by hand. As a result, the revealing process transforms into a piece of performance art.

One handful of sand at a time, the man-made and the natural elements become visible and uncover the concept of the series. Architectural volumes embedded into nature in an exploration of familiarity, tension, and balance. The deliberate contrast between the two elements gives the sculptures a haunting feel. Organic materials and designed elements mirror primordial as well as futuristic structures in nature. It’s a glimpse at the universal relationship between humanity and the natural world and the dependency of the former on the latter. Photographs© Collin Townsend Velkoff.