During his residency, Canizales visited local geological sites along the St. Croix River and 3D scanned basalt formations and rocks he collected. Canizales used a conglomerate rock, a sedimentary rock made of crushed sandstone with small minerals and basalt rock, to create his sculpture. He digitally split a rock in half for Echoed Site and the Unknowable Object, a large 3D printed sculpture that allows viewers to see both inside and outside of the rock (a positive negative relationship). Through this sculpture he foreshadows a future of mainly constructed and digitally fabricated geological formations. In the future the original will only exist as a digital replica and what’s around and below us will be replete with artificial representations of naturally-occurring geological forms.

Joseph Canizales is a Salvadoran Honduran artist born in Miami, FL and currently living and working out of the Midwest. Through digital and analog processes, Canizales sculptures reflect upon our understanding of the intertwined relationship between geological forces and our built environment. He draws connections between the modern rapid construction methods of extracting, gathering, and processing of stone and the incredibly slow yet determined march of naturally occurring erosion. He utilizes 3D printing, modeling, and scanning as his main processes to amplify an understanding of geological sites.

Canizales focuses on creating sculpture with and without geologic sites, by way of digital technology. His forms display two states paradoxically in balance, where what’s presented leaves more questions than answers. He wants you to realize that the machine processing of stone mimics geological processes, but at a faster rate. His work is critiquing our processes of excavating material because it’s occurring in juxtaposition to the millions of years rocks take to form. Echoed sites connect to the origin of geologic materials in contrast to their present state.