It’s Wednesday night so I took a detour on my way back home to visit the Blender Lane Artist Market and studios. This tiny Wednesday night market is a very social event where I often run into interesting people amid the stallholders selling a host of arts, crafts, textiles, and jewelry.

Inside Blender Studios visitors get the chance to take a peek behind the scenes at the ongoing work of some of the artists who occupy the former warehouse space. That’s where I met Marcus Encel who was busy sculpting as visitors walked in and out of his studio.

His studio is crowded with sculptures, equipment, a somewhat out-of-place big screen TV, and full-size wireframe figures without faces hanging eerily in the corner. It was those figures that attracted me to wander in and strike up a conversation with Marcus.

He’s a friendly guy who has no issue talking to me as he works. The process of sculpting looks to be a calm and methodical process, almost meditative in a way. He slowly turns the table around, working on different parts of the bust that’s taking shape, its ridges giving it a somewhat alien appearance.

He doesn’t mind as I quietly snap a few pictures of him working, trying to be as unintrusive as anyone with a camera can be. We chat, he works, I take pictures without looking at the screen.

The piece he’s working on will find its way to the street, he tells me. He doesn’t know where yet but suggests that maybe it will be looking down on people, many of whom might not notice the figure. Marcus believes in creating something interesting in the spaces around us, the idea of, as he says, “Making art happen wherever you are.” I’m no sculptor, of course, but I absolutely believe in that too.