Beau Bilenki is Canadian born, legal USA citizen, who resides in the Midwest in South Bend. Beau's concentration as an artistthese past 41 years has been in the fields of pottery, raku pottery, stoneware, silkscreen prints, oil painting and his current concentration on outdoor scuplutres using materials such as steel lath, mirror and cement.
I am working with welded steel rebar geometric armatures to which I tie galvanized steel lath, then apply by hand, with a spatula, a textured “skin” of common cement. I have added ceramic titles or broken plate mirrors as accents. I am intrigued to take the cement and steel into the air, as a small piece architecture that changes the landscape; at least temporarily. I am curious how a hollow cement sculpture will hold up to the elements. I am excited about the flexibility of this material. It still seems rather demanding to execute, but it gives me more immediate pleasure in creating more outdoor sculptures. I am not using vigorous movement, bright colors or busy patterns, as I want people to find the work through discovery.

With this concept, I can be a sculptor in the mechanics of welding the frames and a painter in the application of the surface.
These materials and techniques require the use of more elaborate, important armatures to build large scale outdoor works that are structurally sound, weather-proof and light in weight relative to their scale