Vertical & Carved Concrete

Even on the thumb tip of northwest Washington state, decorative concrete is making its mark, thanks to this father-son outfit.

Check in and check out three examples of decorative concrete at its finest, in Georgia, Tennessee and California.

If you apply vertical concrete, carve concrete walls or create cast pieces, sooner or later you may have to face a painful truth: Traditional metal lath can be troublesome.

You might think that rappelling from cliffs, learning about orangutan habitats and studying the prehistoric skeleton of a triceratops are activities without much relevance to decorative concrete.

David Seils’ master craft, wall relief sculpture, is an art form that dates back to ancient times, when civilizations carved designs into stone walls, buildings and columns. But instead of chiseling away material, the Asheville, N.C.-based Seils builds up his wall sculptures in layers using mortar, a mason’s hawk and a trowel.

CTS Cement Manufacturing Corp. sent us a story about an enormous waterscape at Cypress Breeze Plantation, a private gated development in north Florida. The job was done by Muud Concrete Design (Multiple Use Unlimited Design), a Los Angeles outfit formed by artisans Adrian Gascon and Neil Hughes.

In August 2010, the Assiniboine Park Conservancy in Winnipeg contacted Randall Klassen to get a quote for the demolition and removal of the Assiniboine Park Zoo’s Tropical House. The house had fallen into disrepair and the conservancy wanted to replace it with a rocky tropical oasis for animals, birds and plants.

We here at Concrete Decor always welcome submissions of photos from concrete artisans around the world. When we received a particularly attractive batch from an artist in Argentina, we decided to share them with you.

These murals are the work of David Seils, an Asheville, N.C.-based designer, artist and relief sculptor. He applies an overlay to the walls to create these intricate, one-of-a-kind pieces.

I’ve always been curious why certain decorative systems and finishes take hold only in certain regions of the country, while others are universal in their appeal and demand. The answer lies somewhere between perception, demand and what the market is offering.

A job that began with a mere 80 square feet of overlay snowballed into a decorative concrete transformation — complete with faux hollow tree — for this restaurant and bar.

Sisters Cindee Lundin and Chenoa Pickrain were raised on a dairy farm near Perham, Minnesota. Lundin is an expert in faux finishing and horizontal and vertical carved concrete. Pickrain is a graphic designer and photographer.

Beginning painters get so excited by the smorgasbord of shapes, colors and textures they have been learning that they often try to put every trick they know into each of their paintings. This leads to a hodge-podge with no focus.

Anyone visiting the Bosch Tool outdoor booth at World of Concrete 2011 could not have missed this tool-carved decorative concrete work created by Steven Ochs and Gerald Taylor.

Nolan King, owner of King Architectural Concrete and Construction LLC in River Falls, Wisconsin, started his own construction business at the age of 23 after graduating from college in 2001 with an engineering degree. His business focused primarily on home remodeling work.

Ellie Ellis of Elite Artistry LLC in Happy Valley, Oregon, and Eva Gallant of Y-Knot Creations LLC in Hurst, Texas, share a bond stronger than the one-ton concrete art piece they produced together in Indianapolis at the Concrete Decor Show.

Adrian Gascon has reinvented himself personally and professionally a few times. He sold cars and played and coached baseball and basketball, then through luck and hard work began fabricating top-secret planes for the government, making $20 an hour at 20 years old.

In the world of theming, epoxy is still an underutilized tool for creating levels of detail and realism second to none. For example, Polygem Inc. has spent years developing its 307 series of epoxy among others that are custom-formulated for this exact type of work.

With more than 30 years of experience as a professional artist — and a darn good one at that — Thom Hunt has worked his magic at more happy places on Earth than even Walt Disney could have imagined.

Rock panels are a popular feature in many homes and businesses across the country. With so many companies specializing in this niche, it is natural that there are a variety of methods for installing the panels. Concrete Decor asked three companies how they told their customers to install faux rock panels.

Being in the construction industry his whole life, Dion Battles made the unsurprising leap to decorative concrete, specifically the vertical carving and theming part of the industry, after the nationwide recession hit the residential building industry hard in 2007.

Exposed aggregate finishes are in demand on concrete walls. How do you get that rock to pop? One way is to use a surface retarder.

Vertical Artisans, launched in January 2008 at Verticalartisans. com, presents training videos and articles by experts. The site aims to offer a broader perspective than can be found at schools or training centers that, besides being bound by the limits of time and space, are often devoted to one manufacturer’s product line or one artisan’s techniques.