Cave Vessel: Rainforest Leopard

There is a visceral sense of life and time that emanates from Palacios’ new Cave Vessels. Using a method that leans heavily on improvisation, the process is high-touch, working from the inside out, as a root would form in the ground and push up and out. Instinctively, Palacios knows when to stop, when the true form of the piece emerges — it is a kind of alchemy that brings the piece to life from its original state. Across the series, the artist then imagines what the form would look like having been buried in a deep cave structure for hundreds of years. The crystalline surfaces and bold colors of geology have always drawn his attention, and the Cave Vessels, in the end, look very much like something hewn from living cave rock.