Mike had been living in a small apartment downtown and wanted to replace the strip of grass in front of his building with a vegetable garden. His proposal to the landlord was to create rammed earth planters. In the course of the back and forth negotiation, Mike ended up testing his ability to construct the rammed earth installations by using the technique to create a garden sculpture. For the formwork, he used 2×4-scrap wood reclaimed from waste dumpsters in nearby residential construction.

Mike up-cycled the formwork into furniture. It retains the original rough and unfinished surface on the interior. The exterior was painstakingly sanded and filled then stained and received nine coats of polyurethane to create a rich blue-lacquer-like finish. We wish him farewell as he moves to Manhattan this summer. The bench will follow sometime in the winter.