The Mike Shaffer Project

Log Cabin Concepts

"Lucy In the Sky" has become a landmark on the campus of the University of Maryland since it was installed in 1994 and acquired by University of Maryland University College a year later. This summer it was reconstructed after a second run-in with unusually severe weather elements, the first run-in being a devistating tornado in 2001 that destroyed her beautiful pine forest backdrop.


"Lucy In the Sky," 13 x 12 x 12 feet, polymer on wood (photo from 1995)

Reassembled and reinforced she now stands alone on a grassy knoll overlooking University Boulevard and Adelphi Road. We wish her well.

Stick Stacks—Dryland Beaver Barns

Sunlight, diffused and in small spots, reaches the floor of the Canaan Valley Institute property near the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia amidst tall deciduous trees and conifers. Areas of dense rhododendron thickets and open forestscapes of ferns and compacted leaves predominate. Tall trees such as oaks that die remain standing for decades, dropping their twigs first, and later, the thicker branches as the weakness of decay approaches the trunk. Under these stately towers, fallen limbs become linear elements in the minds of certain 3d artists for which the environmental is their studio, their source of supplies, and their gallery.


"Beaver Barn 4," about 2 x 2 x 4 teet

Stacks of crisscrossing pieces of wood are the basic configuration of frontier log cabins as well as certain works of art. Limited by the materials at hand, Mike Shaffer's Beaver Barns, as he calls them (by dryland beavers, he says), jut up like monster mushrooms from the leafy mat.

Rock Stacks

Snow-covered in winter, the summer highland mountains and valleys around the Dolly Sods Wilderness and the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia is spectacular yet foreign to most East Coast low landers. Vast areas of blueberry and fern groundcover dominate selected slopes punctuated by clumps of Spruce and Hemlock all growing atop mountains of rocks and boulders, a few tops of which remain visible like nests of enormous prehistoric creatures.


"Cairns 3 and 4", each about 6 feet.

Outsized rock cairns best describe Mike Shaffer's towers of rocks that rise up out of the undergrowth like strange natural formations. Fragile and temporary in the totality of their being, not with respect to their materials but because of the simplistic nature of their construction and dependence on perfect balance, they are easily ruined by a gust of wind or a curious crow.


"Cairn 5", about 5 feet.

The Road Show—A Drive By Gallery

The Hyattstown Mill Arts Project in Hyattstown, Maryland each year sponsors an unusual exhibition of sculpture in cooperation with the residents of the town. The annual event was started in 2001 in an effort to give drivers a reason to slow down as they passed through and received national media attention in part because of its novel approach to traffic control. A work by Mike Shaffer in this year's show, adds motion to a mesh of crisscrossing elements forming the work's mass with its top of solar-powered rotating "fruit." The bright tower stands out from the greenery and is intended to be a blend of seriousness and fun.


"Tall Fall Turn Around," 13 x 3 x 3 feet, wood, objects and solar and other electrical components"

There are about a dozen works in the show; all are in combinations of metal and or wood. Adam Curtis lends reserved dignity to the group with a work having a classic inverted triangle profile formed by intersecting planes of rustic wood. Other notable works include some tall narrow reclaimed wood and rebar sculptures by Bobby Donovan and some sizable chainsaw-carved wood abstractions and whimisical "heads" by Tom Barse.


"Totem," 7 x 3 x 3 feet, oak and carbon steel, Adam Curtis"

The Hyattstown Mill Arts Project is a public-service arts and humanities organization serving Maryland's southern Frederick and upper Montgomery County regions. HMAP operates out of an historic mill located on the edge of Little Bennett Regional Park in Montgomery County and is supported by the park, the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, public and private grants and its members.