Mandala Magic

Mandala Magic was my first public art installation — built in 2020 for igNIGHT, the winter light festival in Fort McMurray. It was part of a larger mandala tiles collection that travelled there together, including a centerpiece prime that sold off the floor. Mandala Magic itself has lived a longer life: three editions of the piece have sold to collectors since the original Fort McMurray showing, making it one of the most repeated forms in my catalogue.

Mandala Magic is a multilayer wood-and-acrylic geometry — birch, mahogany, plywood, cast acrylic, and spruce stacked into the mandala form, with LEDs threaded through the depth so each layer can be programmed independently. It was one of the first pieces where I treated light as a sculptural axis instead of a finish: the rings and petals don't just glow, they move against each other, so the same static form reads differently second to second. Hangs flat on a wall, or sits in a larger easel when it needs to stand on its own.

Mandala Magic was the piece that taught me what LightBox would actually be. Going to igNIGHT in 2020 was my first time putting work into a public festival context — a winter light festival in Fort McMurray where the audience walks past at their own pace and the piece either holds them or doesn't. Layered programmable LEDs were a new idea for me at the time; the choice to give each layer its own animation channel is the move I've reused in almost every installation since. And the form earned its own life — three collectors have commissioned their own editions of Mandala Magic since the original showing, which is unusual in my catalogue. Most pieces are one-offs. This one wanted to be repeated.