Joseph Canizales is a Salvadoran Honduran American artist currently living and working out of the Midwest. He received his MFA in Visual Arts from Washington University in St. Louis in 2022.

Through digital and analogue processes, Canizales’ work reflects 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, 3D modeling, 3D scanning as his main processes to amplify an understanding of geological sites.

Through the piece, Entropic Limestone 2022, Canizales considers the geologic history of limestone while demonstrating its use as a building material. As organisms die in the ocean, their shells and bones are broken down by waves, and their sediments settle down on the seafloor. The shells are turned into calcite and the sedimentation of calcite makes limestone. In this monolithic sculpture, he uses gradients to make comparisons between sedimentation and the construction of concrete objects. The shells are placed as fossils in the concrete, broken down at the centre and becoming more whole as you gaze down.

This powder at the base is the processed heated limestone (hydrated lime) which concludes the sculpture back to its origin and ends as if the form is breaking down. In Entropic Limestone, 2022 Canizales demonstrates two opposing forces (humans & geology) coming into balance over a long period of time. This sculpture simultaneously presents the beauty of limestone's geologic origin and the issues in regard to its present state as a building material.

Entropic Limestone, 2021

Limestone & seashells