The work begins with a question of motion. A coastline, a mountain range, a fault line, a stretch of seafloor may read as fixed, yet each is still becoming, shaped by forces that remain active on a timescale too slow to observe directly. Jonas Mikolayunas builds relief sculpture that holds a place at one moment in that process, in hardwood and resin, from the measured record of its elevation and depth.
The question first took form in freestanding water sculptures made during a BFA in Sculpture, alongside training in ceramic and metal casting. Those pieces were an attempt to sit with moving water long enough to understand it, and to hold what he saw. Casting taught him that a material can record a moment of flow and keep it. Wood and resin came later, carrying the same logic into landscape.
Elevation and depth data now let Mikolayunas reconstruct a place with precision: how it was formed, what is reshaping it now, and where it is heading. Research into the geology of a site gives each work its structure. The resin's translucency keeps the ground beneath the water in view, where the negotiation between land and water is written. The subjects have widened over time from coastlines and islands to fjords, straits, gorges, and fault lines, wherever evidence of force remains legible in the ground.
The practice moves between commissioned work, gallery work, and pieces initiated in the studio. Wood and resin serve the present line of inquiry. The larger subject is motion and geologic time, and the work is moving toward other materials to hold them.
Mikolayunas works from a studio in Natick, Massachusetts. His work is held in private collections and shown through select galleries.