MORGAN LUGO SCULPTURE

Stainless Steel and Acrylic

9’ x 9’ x 3’

2025

Permanent Location: Franconia Sculpture Park

Made and installed during 2025 Mid-Career Fellowship

Calibrated solar timekeeping instrument, registered with the North American Sundial Society

Time is of the Essence is a fully functioning sundial and sculptural installation that mimics how the brain perceives and maps time and space while actively telling time in space. Built with three conceptual layers of mirrored stainless steel and laser-cut acrylic, the sculpture casts an almost 50-foot rainbow spectrum neuron map that shifts throughout the day, physically embodying the passage of time.

Each layer holds meaning: the outer stainless shell is a neuron map reflecting both inward and outward; the middle acrylic layer maps all the sculptures across Franconia Sculpture Park; the innermost layer maps constellations above the site. As light passes through these lattices, the shadows create new synaptic hues representing both neural and communal connection. These colors shift throughout the day and across the seasons, marking not just the hour, but the passage of multiple temporalities: personal, collective, planetary. The sculpture maps moment, movement, memory, and interaction all at once.

Ultimately, Time is of the Essence embodies the illusion of permanence through the lens of perception, reflection, and layered being. The intention is to experience your own reflection layered with others’, to see yourself both within and outside of time. The piece reveals that time is not a single clock, but a constellation of perception that is woven together by the brain, the body, and the world around us. It reminds us that everything we think of as real (time, space, self) is constructed from overlapping illusions, made tangible only through presence. 

Photo Credit: Brent Snyder

Stainless Steel and Acrylic

48” x 48” x 72”

2024

Permanent Location: Brookhaven City Centre 

Previously Located: Peachtree Creek Greenway

A luminous network of mirrored steel and acrylic that captures sunlight, reflection, and color, revealing how individual memory becomes part of a larger collective story.

Technicolor Timescape explores the relationship between individual memory and the collective identity of a community. The sculpture takes the form of a three-dimensional neural network, reflecting how personal experiences and shared histories weave together to shape the places we inhabit. Constructed from mirror-polished stainless steel and layered transparent acrylic, the structure captures and refracts sunlight, casting shifting fields of color that transform throughout the day.

The mirrored surfaces reflect both the viewer and the surrounding environment, allowing each person to see themselves within the sculpture’s evolving composition. Inspired by the cultural vibrancy of the Brookhaven City Centre, the work becomes a living portrait of the community it reflects, an ever-changing tapestry of connection, movement, and exchange.

As light passes through the layered acrylic, colors overlap and scatter across the ground like synaptic signals, echoing the way memories and relationships form within a network. The sculpture changes with the seasons, the weather, and the people who encounter it. In this way, Technicolor Timescape becomes both mirror and map, a luminous reminder that communities, like memories, are always forming in real time.

Photo Credit: Sammy Bentley 

Mirror Polished Stainless Steel

Diameter: 4’ x 4’

2025

Permanent Location: The Goat Farm Arts Center

Head in the Clouds is an interactive, site-specific installation that transforms the ground into a shifting sky. Made of fragmented, mirror-polished stainless steel, it reflects the clouds above, dissolving the boundary between earth and sky, thought and form, the tangible and the imagined. The negative space between mirrored elements creates a neurological network within the air itself, an evolving constellation of reflection and perception.

Rooted in paradox, this piece balances heavy industrial materials with a weightless, dreamlike experience. As light shifts and seasons change, the sculpture constantly reinvents itself, ensuring no two encounters are ever the same. Viewers become part of the work, their presence captured in fleeting reflections, just as thoughts form, fade, and transform.

Embedded within the Goat Farm landscape, Head in the Clouds embodies the spirit of discovery, inviting both intentional seekers and accidental wanderers to engage with their surroundings in unexpected ways.

Marble, Acrylic, and Mirror

30” x 36” 12”

2024

Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

Eventual Horizons is a meditation on the intimate, unbreakable connection between mother and child, interpreted through the lens of theoretical physics, organic form, and mythology. The sculpture uses the poetic language of science to frame motherhood as both a cosmic and deeply personal phenomenon. Quantum entanglement, the mysterious bond that connects particles across infinite distances, becomes a metaphor for maternal intuition: a connection that transcends space, time, and explanation.

At the heart of the work is the black hole’s event horizon, a threshold where time and space collapse into a singularity. It marks a moment of becoming, when boundaries dissolve, and two bodies become one. The translucent grid below evokes the fabric of spacetime, acting as both structure and vessel, a cradle that holds and suspends life, much like gravity shapes the cosmos and a mother sustains creation with quiet force.

Nature is woven into this framework through the marble moon and calla lilies, which echo the pregnant form and feminine anatomy. The curvature of the lilies suggests fallopian tubes while simultaneously mirroring the logic of entanglement, two entities forever linked through origin. These forms align with Taíno cosmology, in which Atabey, the primordial mother and goddess of the moon, embodies creation itself. Here, her womb is reimagined as a black hole: a generative void where life, matter, and time emerge.

Eventual Horizons draws the viewer into a liminal space, a threshold where the personal and the universal collapse into one another. It asks us to consider creation not as a singular event, but as an ongoing condition: a continuous unfolding held within the gravitational, emotional, and cosmic bonds that shape our existence.

Acrylic 

8” x 4.5” x 2”

2025

Available; E-mail with Inquiry

Neural Spectra is a series of acrylic studies exploring the relationship between light, perception, and the branching architectures of neural networks. Transparent structures act as chromatic filters, transforming sunlight into shifting constellations of color and shadow.

As light moves through the forms, the sculptures extend beyond their physical bodies, producing both traditional shadows and spectral projections of filtered color. These overlapping phenomena create luminous patterns that resemble branching neural pathways—temporary drawings of light that echo how information and memory travel through the brain.

In this series, light becomes both subject and material. The works explore how something intangible can reveal other invisible systems, tracing connections between neural structures, embodied perception, and cosmic systems. Through shadow and spectral projection, the sculptures suggest that patterns of organization repeat across scales—from the microscopic architecture of the brain to the larger structures that shape the universe.

Acrylic 

9” x 9” x 2”

2025

Available: E-mail with Inquiry 

Neural Spectra is a series of acrylic studies exploring the relationship between light, perception, and the branching architectures of neural networks. Transparent structures act as chromatic filters, transforming sunlight into shifting constellations of color and shadow.

As light moves through the forms, the sculptures extend beyond their physical bodies, producing both traditional shadows and spectral projections of filtered color. These overlapping phenomena create luminous patterns that resemble branching neural pathways—temporary drawings of light that echo how information and memory travel through the brain.

In this series, light becomes both subject and material. The works explore how something intangible can reveal other invisible systems, tracing connections between neural structures, embodied perception, and cosmic systems. Through shadow and spectral projection, the sculptures suggest that patterns of organization repeat across scales—from the microscopic architecture of the brain to the larger structures that shape the universe.

Acrylic

8” x 4.5” x 3”

2025

Available: E-mail with Inquiry 

Neural Spectra is a series of acrylic studies exploring the relationship between light, perception, and the branching architectures of neural networks. Transparent structures act as chromatic filters, transforming sunlight into shifting constellations of color and shadow.

As light moves through the forms, the sculptures extend beyond their physical bodies, producing both traditional shadows and spectral projections of filtered color. These overlapping phenomena create luminous patterns that resemble branching neural pathways—temporary drawings of light that echo how information and memory travel through the brain.

In this series, light becomes both subject and material. The works explore how something intangible can reveal other invisible systems, tracing connections between neural structures, embodied perception, and cosmic systems. Through shadow and spectral projection, the sculptures suggest that patterns of organization repeat across scales—from the microscopic architecture of the brain to the larger structures that shape the universe.

Acrylic

3” x 3” x 2”

2025

Available: E-mail with Inquiry 

Neural Spectra is a series of acrylic studies exploring the relationship between light, perception, and the branching architectures of neural networks. Transparent structures act as chromatic filters, transforming sunlight into shifting constellations of color and shadow.

As light moves through the forms, the sculptures extend beyond their physical bodies, producing both traditional shadows and spectral projections of filtered color. These overlapping phenomena create luminous patterns that resemble branching neural pathways—temporary drawings of light that echo how information and memory travel through the brain.

In this series, light becomes both subject and material. The works explore how something intangible can reveal other invisible systems, tracing connections between neural structures, embodied perception, and cosmic systems. Through shadow and spectral projection, the sculptures suggest that patterns of organization repeat across scales—from the microscopic architecture of the brain to the larger structures that shape the universe.

Acrylic

8” x 8” x 8”

2025

Available: E-mail with Inquiry 

Neural Spectra is a series of acrylic studies exploring the relationship between light, perception, and the branching architectures of neural networks. Transparent structures act as chromatic filters, transforming sunlight into shifting constellations of color and shadow.

As light moves through the forms, the sculptures extend beyond their physical bodies, producing both traditional shadows and spectral projections of filtered color. These overlapping phenomena create luminous patterns that resemble branching neural pathways—temporary drawings of light that echo how information and memory travel through the brain.

In this series, light becomes both subject and material. The works explore how something intangible can reveal other invisible systems, tracing connections between neural structures, embodied perception, and cosmic systems. Through shadow and spectral projection, the sculptures suggest that patterns of organization repeat across scales—from the microscopic architecture of the brain to the larger structures that shape the universe.

Aluminum, Acrylic, Astroturf, Wood, Mirror

24”x 24” x 55”

2021-2022

Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

Organic, branching forms emerge from a central trunk, echoing fungal growth and neural pathways, while clustered spheres act as nodes, points of accumulation, exchange, and transformation. Rooted in the logic of mycorrhizal networks, these forms reference the symbiotic systems through which trees and fungi exchange nutrients and information, suggesting a shared architecture between ecological, cognitive, and cosmic structures. Translucent ribbons weave through the sculpture like trails of light, tracing movement through space in a way that feels both physical and ephemeral.

The work draws from the concept of Dark Cloud Constellations, cosmic narratives formed not by stars, but by the spaces between them. In this way, Trails considers how meaning is often found in absence, in the unseen structures that shape experience. This logic extends inward, reflecting the navigation of one’s own internal landscape, where clarity is not always found in moments of brightness, but in learning to move through darkness.

Inspired by walking through the forest at dusk, the sculpture reflects the disorienting yet guiding presence of fireflies, points of light that appear before night fully arrives. These fleeting illuminations become a metaphor for intuition and inherited knowledge: subtle signals that guide movement through shifting states of visibility, while also mimicking the transmission of information across synaptic networks in the brain.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Trails proposes a relational understanding of existence, where interconnected systems, both internal and external, offer orientation even in moments of uncertainty. Rather than resisting darkness, the work suggests that navigation emerges through it, guided by the networks that quietly hold and connect us.

Bronze, Steel, Mirror

30” x 36” x 64”

2019-2022

Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

Forever Becoming draws from the Indigenous star lore of the Barasana people of the Amazon rainforest, who understand the Milky Way as the “path of souls”, a luminous band connecting earth and cosmos. In this context, the sky is not distant, but relational: a passage through which spirits travel between worlds, forming an eternal cycle of descent and return. This cosmology reflects a continuous loop of life, death, memory, and transformation, where transitions are not endings, but shifts in state, mirroring how we carry past versions of ourselves into who we are becoming.

The sculpture translates this idea into a bodily and material form. A single figure unfolds into multiple faces, past, present, and emerging selves, interwoven within a continuous, looping structure. The form suggests motion without a fixed beginning or end, while its mirror-finished interior reflects distorted images of the self and others, catching light like distant stars. In doing so, the viewer becomes part of the work, situated within the same cycle of reflection, fragmentation, and transformation.

Operating between the cosmic and the corporeal, Forever Becoming considers identity as something in constant evolution. Growth is not linear, but accumulative, an ongoing layering shaped by memory, experience, and adaptation. Like the “path of souls,” our lives are not defined by arrival, but by movement. We are not fixed beings, but constellations of selves, continuously shifting, expanding, and returning. Always in motion. Always in process. Forever becoming.

Bronze and Neon

10’ x 6’ combined (individual measurements below)

2021-2022

Editions Available; E-mail with inquiry

Family Recipe draws from the widespread mythology surrounding the Orion constellation, one of the most universally visible formations in the night sky. Positioned along the celestial equator, Orion has long functioned as both a narrative and navigational system, used across cultures to track seasonal shifts and guide cycles of agriculture, sustenance, and survival. In this way, the constellation becomes more than a pattern of stars; it is a system of nourishment, linking the sky to earth and the cosmos to daily life. It reflects the rhythms of living as something sacred, cycles quite literally written in the stars, passed down and reinterpreted across generations.

The installation translates this framework into a sculptural constellation of cast bronze “star clusters,” orbiting a central mirrored plate ringed in glowing neon. This form echoes Orion’s Belt, a burner on a stove, and a point of continual creation. This reflective core acts as both anchor and invitation, placing the viewer within a personal cosmology shaped through food, memory, and inheritance. Sicilian, Puerto Rican, and Southern lineages converge through ingredients and gestures, a hand offering, a mouth reaching, a meal held like a relic, each element functioning like a star within a shifting neural and communal constellation.

At its core, Family Recipe considers food as a language of connection and survival. Through cooking and gathering, we preserve histories, negotiate identity, and come to know one another. For those shaped by multiple cultural inheritances, identity is not singular, but layered and evolving. Like a recipe, it is built through adaptation, memory, and care. At the center, the mirrored plate reflects this onto the viewer, asking what is carried forward and what is transformed, where each ingredient, like each self, holds a history, and every act of sharing becomes a way of remembering.

Measurements for individual pieces:

-Family Recipe (Serve Yourself); : 11” x 11” x 1”

-Family Recipe (Ripe Now): 11” x 6” x 4”

-Family Recipe (Sweet Tooth): 14” x 6” x 4.5”

-Family Recipe (Slow & Low):  24” x 14” x 5”

-Family Recipe (Besos Del Mar): 25.5” x 20” x 6”

-Family Recipe (Mangia, Mangia): 23” x 19” x 4”

Marble (Bonded)

16” x 11” x 13”

2023 - 2024

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

The Mind of Matter series centers on mycelium as both material metaphor and structural intelligence, a living system that dissolves the boundaries between individual and collective existence. Beneath the forest floor, mycelial networks operate as vast, decentralized webs, transferring nutrients, chemical signals, and information across species. These systems do not prioritize the singular organism, but instead sustain the health and continuity of the whole.

In this work, mycelium becomes a model for understanding consciousness itself. The branching, root-like forms weave through and between smooth, spherical structures, evoking both fungal networks and neural pathways. These connections suggest a shared logic among biological, cognitive, and ecological systems, in which thought, matter, and environment are not separate but entangled.

The spheres function as nodes within this network: bodies, memories, or entire worlds. Drawing from theories of eternal inflation and “bubble universes,” each sphere exists as a self-contained reality, while remaining fundamentally connected to others through an underlying, unseen structure. Mycelium becomes the bridge between these states, linking what appears discrete into a continuous field of exchange.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Mind of Matter positions mycelium as a symbolic and literal connector, a conduit through which energy, information, and experience circulate. It proposes a model of existence that is not hierarchical, but relational: a distributed consciousness in which individuality is not lost, but held in constant dialogue with the greater whole.

Bronze

16” x 11” x 13”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry  

These bubble sculptures emerge from Lugo’s childhood memories of blowing bubbles in the park, fleeting forms that once felt monumental, just out of reach, suspended between play and impossibility. What was once a simple act becomes, in retrospect, an early encounter with scale, perception, and the illusion of permanence.

In this body of work, the bubble becomes both a personal and a cosmological structure. Drawing from the concept of “bubble universes” within the theory of eternal inflation, each form becomes a self-contained world, distinct yet intimately connected to the larger whole. These clustered volumes echo the logic found throughout Lugo’s practice: systems within systems, bodies within bodies, universes nested inside one another.

The soft, swollen geometry of the sculptures resists rigid structure, instead embracing a fluid, cellular language that mirrors both organic growth and cosmic expansion. Their surfaces hold subtle variations, evidence of time, touch, and process, reinforcing the tension between permanence and ephemerality that defines Lugo’s work.

At a human scale, these forms become a meditation on shared experience. Much like parallel universes, we occupy the same physical world while perceiving it through entirely different lenses. Each “bubble” suggests an individual reality shaped by memory, culture, and perspective, yet inseparable from the collective environment that holds it.

By grounding theoretical physics in embodied memory, Lugo creates a space where the intimate and the infinite collapse into one another, where a childhood gesture expands into a model for understanding the structure of existence itself.

Bronze

16” x 11” x 13”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry  

The Mind of Matter series centers on mycelium as both material metaphor and structural intelligence, a living system that dissolves the boundaries between individual and collective existence. Beneath the forest floor, mycelial networks operate as vast, decentralized webs, transferring nutrients, chemical signals, and information across species. These systems do not prioritize the singular organism, but instead sustain the health and continuity of the whole.

In this work, mycelium becomes a model for understanding consciousness itself. The branching, root-like forms weave through and between smooth, spherical structures, evoking both fungal networks and neural pathways. These connections suggest a shared logic among biological, cognitive, and ecological systems, in which thought, matter, and environment are not separate but entangled.

The spheres function as nodes within this network: bodies, memories, or entire worlds. Drawing from theories of eternal inflation and “bubble universes,” each sphere exists as a self-contained reality, while remaining fundamentally connected to others through an underlying, unseen structure. Mycelium becomes the bridge between these states, linking what appears discrete into a continuous field of exchange.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Mind of Matter positions mycelium as a symbolic and literal connector, a conduit through which energy, information, and experience circulate. It proposes a model of existence that is not hierarchical, but relational: a distributed consciousness in which individuality is not lost, but held in constant dialogue with the greater whole.

Marble (Bonded)

16” x 11” x 13”

2023 - 2024

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

The Mind of Matter series centers on mycelium as both material metaphor and structural intelligence, a living system that dissolves the boundaries between individual and collective existence. Beneath the forest floor, mycelial networks operate as vast, decentralized webs, transferring nutrients, chemical signals, and information across species. These systems do not prioritize the singular organism, but instead sustain the health and continuity of the whole.

In this work, mycelium becomes a model for understanding consciousness itself. The branching, root-like forms weave through and between smooth, spherical structures, evoking both fungal networks and neural pathways. These connections suggest a shared logic among biological, cognitive, and ecological systems, in which thought, matter, and environment are not separate but entangled.

The spheres function as nodes within this network: bodies, memories, or entire worlds. Drawing from theories of eternal inflation and “bubble universes,” each sphere exists as a self-contained reality, while remaining fundamentally connected to others through an underlying, unseen structure. Mycelium becomes the bridge between these states, linking what appears discrete into a continuous field of exchange.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Mind of Matter positions mycelium as a symbolic and literal connector, a conduit through which energy, information, and experience circulate. It proposes a model of existence that is not hierarchical, but relational: a distributed consciousness in which individuality is not lost, but held in constant dialogue with the greater whole.

Bronze

16” x 11” x 13”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

These bubble sculptures emerge from Lugo’s childhood memories of blowing bubbles in the park, fleeting forms that once felt monumental, just out of reach, suspended between play and impossibility. What was once a simple act becomes, in retrospect, an early encounter with scale, perception, and the illusion of permanence.

In this body of work, the bubble becomes both a personal and a cosmological structure. Drawing from the concept of “bubble universes” within the theory of eternal inflation, each form becomes a self-contained world, distinct yet intimately connected to the larger whole. These clustered volumes echo the logic found throughout Lugo’s practice: systems within systems, bodies within bodies, universes nested inside one another.

The soft, swollen geometry of the sculptures resists rigid structure, instead embracing a fluid, cellular language that mirrors both organic growth and cosmic expansion. Their surfaces hold subtle variations, evidence of time, touch, and process, reinforcing the tension between permanence and ephemerality that defines Lugo’s work.

At a human scale, these forms become a meditation on shared experience. Much like parallel universes, we occupy the same physical world while perceiving it through entirely different lenses. Each “bubble” suggests an individual reality shaped by memory, culture, and perspective, yet inseparable from the collective environment that holds it.

By grounding theoretical physics in embodied memory, Lugo creates a space where the intimate and the infinite collapse into one another, where a childhood gesture expands into a model for understanding the structure of existence itself.

Bronze

16” x 11” x 13”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

The Mind of Matter series centers on mycelium as both material metaphor and structural intelligence, a living system that dissolves the boundaries between individual and collective existence. Beneath the forest floor, mycelial networks operate as vast, decentralized webs, transferring nutrients, chemical signals, and information across species. These systems do not prioritize the singular organism, but instead sustain the health and continuity of the whole.

In this work, mycelium becomes a model for understanding consciousness itself. The branching, root-like forms weave through and between smooth, spherical structures, evoking both fungal networks and neural pathways. These connections suggest a shared logic among biological, cognitive, and ecological systems, in which thought, matter, and environment are not separate but entangled.

The spheres function as nodes within this network: bodies, memories, or entire worlds. Drawing from theories of eternal inflation and “bubble universes,” each sphere exists as a self-contained reality, while remaining fundamentally connected to others through an underlying, unseen structure. Mycelium becomes the bridge between these states, linking what appears discrete into a continuous field of exchange.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Mind of Matter positions mycelium as a symbolic and literal connector, a conduit through which energy, information, and experience circulate. It proposes a model of existence that is not hierarchical, but relational: a distributed consciousness in which individuality is not lost, but held in constant dialogue with the greater whole.

Marble (Bonded)

16” x 11” x 13”

2023 - 2024

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

The Mind of Matter series centers on mycelium as both material metaphor and structural intelligence, a living system that dissolves the boundaries between individual and collective existence. Beneath the forest floor, mycelial networks operate as vast, decentralized webs, transferring nutrients, chemical signals, and information across species. These systems do not prioritize the singular organism, but instead sustain the health and continuity of the whole.

In this work, mycelium becomes a model for understanding consciousness itself. The branching, root-like forms weave through and between smooth, spherical structures, evoking both fungal networks and neural pathways. These connections suggest a shared logic among biological, cognitive, and ecological systems, in which thought, matter, and environment are not separate but entangled.

The spheres function as nodes within this network: bodies, memories, or entire worlds. Drawing from theories of eternal inflation and “bubble universes,” each sphere exists as a self-contained reality, while remaining fundamentally connected to others through an underlying, unseen structure. Mycelium becomes the bridge between these states, linking what appears discrete into a continuous field of exchange.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Mind of Matter positions mycelium as a symbolic and literal connector, a conduit through which energy, information, and experience circulate. It proposes a model of existence that is not hierarchical, but relational: a distributed consciousness in which individuality is not lost, but held in constant dialogue with the greater whole.

Bronze

10” x 11” x 13”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

These bubble sculptures emerge from Lugo’s childhood memories of blowing bubbles in the park, fleeting forms that once felt monumental, just out of reach, suspended between play and impossibility. What was once a simple act becomes, in retrospect, an early encounter with scale, perception, and the illusion of permanence.

In this body of work, the bubble becomes both a personal and a cosmological structure. Drawing from the concept of “bubble universes” within the theory of eternal inflation, each form becomes a self-contained world, distinct yet intimately connected to the larger whole. These clustered volumes echo the logic found throughout Lugo’s practice: systems within systems, bodies within bodies, universes nested inside one another.

The soft, swollen geometry of the sculptures resists rigid structure, instead embracing a fluid, cellular language that mirrors both organic growth and cosmic expansion. Their surfaces hold subtle variations, evidence of time, touch, and process, reinforcing the tension between permanence and ephemerality that defines Lugo’s work.

At a human scale, these forms become a meditation on shared experience. Much like parallel universes, we occupy the same physical world while perceiving it through entirely different lenses. Each “bubble” suggests an individual reality shaped by memory, culture, and perspective, yet inseparable from the collective environment that holds it.

By grounding theoretical physics in embodied memory, Lugo creates a space where the intimate and the infinite collapse into one another, where a childhood gesture expands into a model for understanding the structure of existence itself.

Bronze

16” x 11” x 13”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry  

The Mind of Matter series centers on mycelium as both material metaphor and structural intelligence, a living system that dissolves the boundaries between individual and collective existence. Beneath the forest floor, mycelial networks operate as vast, decentralized webs, transferring nutrients, chemical signals, and information across species. These systems do not prioritize the singular organism, but instead sustain the health and continuity of the whole.

In this work, mycelium becomes a model for understanding consciousness itself. The branching, root-like forms weave through and between smooth, spherical structures, evoking both fungal networks and neural pathways. These connections suggest a shared logic among biological, cognitive, and ecological systems, in which thought, matter, and environment are not separate but entangled.

The spheres function as nodes within this network: bodies, memories, or entire worlds. Drawing from theories of eternal inflation and “bubble universes,” each sphere exists as a self-contained reality, while remaining fundamentally connected to others through an underlying, unseen structure. Mycelium becomes the bridge between these states, linking what appears discrete into a continuous field of exchange.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Mind of Matter positions mycelium as a symbolic and literal connector, a conduit through which energy, information, and experience circulate. It proposes a model of existence that is not hierarchical, but relational: a distributed consciousness in which individuality is not lost, but held in constant dialogue with the greater whole.

Marble (Bonded)

16” x 11” x 13”

2023 - 2024

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

The Mind of Matter series centers on mycelium as both material metaphor and structural intelligence, a living system that dissolves the boundaries between individual and collective existence. Beneath the forest floor, mycelial networks operate as vast, decentralized webs, transferring nutrients, chemical signals, and information across species. These systems do not prioritize the singular organism, but instead sustain the health and continuity of the whole.

In this work, mycelium becomes a model for understanding consciousness itself. The branching, root-like forms weave through and between smooth, spherical structures, evoking both fungal networks and neural pathways. These connections suggest a shared logic among biological, cognitive, and ecological systems, in which thought, matter, and environment are not separate but entangled.

The spheres function as nodes within this network: bodies, memories, or entire worlds. Drawing from theories of eternal inflation and “bubble universes,” each sphere exists as a self-contained reality, while remaining fundamentally connected to others through an underlying, unseen structure. Mycelium becomes the bridge between these states, linking what appears discrete into a continuous field of exchange.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Mind of Matter positions mycelium as a symbolic and literal connector, a conduit through which energy, information, and experience circulate. It proposes a model of existence that is not hierarchical, but relational: a distributed consciousness in which individuality is not lost, but held in constant dialogue with the greater whole.

Bronze

10” x 11” x 13”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

These bubble sculptures emerge from Lugo’s childhood memories of blowing bubbles in the park, fleeting forms that once felt monumental, just out of reach, suspended between play and impossibility. What was once a simple act becomes, in retrospect, an early encounter with scale, perception, and the illusion of permanence.

In this body of work, the bubble becomes both a personal and a cosmological structure. Drawing from the concept of “bubble universes” within the theory of eternal inflation, each form becomes a self-contained world, distinct yet intimately connected to the larger whole. These clustered volumes echo the logic found throughout Lugo’s practice: systems within systems, bodies within bodies, universes nested inside one another.

The soft, swollen geometry of the sculptures resists rigid structure, instead embracing a fluid, cellular language that mirrors both organic growth and cosmic expansion. Their surfaces hold subtle variations, evidence of time, touch, and process, reinforcing the tension between permanence and ephemerality that defines Lugo’s work.

At a human scale, these forms become a meditation on shared experience. Much like parallel universes, we occupy the same physical world while perceiving it through entirely different lenses. Each “bubble” suggests an individual reality shaped by memory, culture, and perspective, yet inseparable from the collective environment that holds it.

By grounding theoretical physics in embodied memory, Lugo creates a space where the intimate and the infinite collapse into one another, where a childhood gesture expands into a model for understanding the structure of existence itself.

Bronze

16” x 11” x 13”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

The Mind of Matter series centers on mycelium as both material metaphor and structural intelligence, a living system that dissolves the boundaries between individual and collective existence. Beneath the forest floor, mycelial networks operate as vast, decentralized webs, transferring nutrients, chemical signals, and information across species. These systems do not prioritize the singular organism, but instead sustain the health and continuity of the whole.

In this work, mycelium becomes a model for understanding consciousness itself. The branching, root-like forms weave through and between smooth, spherical structures, evoking both fungal networks and neural pathways. These connections suggest a shared logic among biological, cognitive, and ecological systems, in which thought, matter, and environment are not separate but entangled.

The spheres function as nodes within this network: bodies, memories, or entire worlds. Drawing from theories of eternal inflation and “bubble universes,” each sphere exists as a self-contained reality, while remaining fundamentally connected to others through an underlying, unseen structure. Mycelium becomes the bridge between these states, linking what appears discrete into a continuous field of exchange.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Mind of Matter positions mycelium as a symbolic and literal connector, a conduit through which energy, information, and experience circulate. It proposes a model of existence that is not hierarchical, but relational: a distributed consciousness in which individuality is not lost, but held in constant dialogue with the greater whole.

Bronze and Neon

11” x 11” x 1”

2021-2022

Editions Available; E-mail with inquiry

Family Recipe is a neural constellation built from flavor, touch, and inheritance, where recipes become maps of memory. Each cluster traces how identity is shaped through what we make, share, and carry forward.

At the center of the constellation, a mirrored plate ringed in glowing neon anchors the system, its form echoing Orion’s Belt, often perceived as three fixed stars, but in reality a dense region of continuous star formation. In this way, the plate marks a site of ongoing creation rather than stability.

This reflective core functions as both structure and invitation. Its surface places the viewer within the constellation, situating them at the point where new formations occur, where inherited materials are not simply observed, but actively reconfigured. Like a kitchen or an empty plate, it becomes a space of assembly, selection, and transformation. The surrounding neon emits a steady, radiant glow, recalling both the heat of a stove and the energy of a star, signaling that this is an active site of generation.

Here, the viewer is positioned within the intersection of individual and collective memory. What has been passed down culturally, familially, and communally remains available, but not fixed. The plate frames identity as something composed in real time, shaped through choice, adaptation, and participation within a larger, evolving system.

Bronze

23” x 19” x 4”

2021-2022

Private Collector: Memphis, Tennessee (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with inquiry

Family Recipe is a neural constellation built from flavor, touch, and inheritance, where recipes become maps of memory. Each cluster traces how identity is shaped through what we make, share, and carry forward.

A dense cluster of intention, memory, and devotion, Mangia, Mangia draws from Sicilian culinary traditions rooted in land, sea, and ritual, where feeding becomes a language of love.

Citrus is held mid-offering, figs split open, shellfish and pasta gathered like relics. The body appears in fragments, hands, gestures, instincts, remembering what it means to nourish and be nourished.

It captures the vibrant chaos of a Sicilian meal in motion, a table always expanding, where there is always another seat.

Bronze

25.5” x 20” x 6”

2021-2022

Editions Available; E-mail with inquiry

Family Recipe is a neural constellation built from flavor, touch, and inheritance, where recipes become maps of memory. Each cluster traces how identity is shaped through what we make, share, and carry forward.

A rhythmic cluster of movement, resilience, and passion, Besos Del Mar draws from Puerto Rican culinary traditions shaped by tide, heat, and repetition, where cooking becomes both labor and celebration.

Coconut, plantain, pepper, citrus, seafood, flavors pulled from salt, sun, and whatever the day gives. The body is present in motion, hands working, bodies swaying, where feeding and dancing exist as one continuous act.

It holds the tension of effort and joy, where what could be scarcity becomes abundance. Food moves here like a tide, cyclical, shared, and always returning.

Bronze

24” x 14” x 5”

2021-2022

Editions Available; E-mail with inquiry

Family Recipe is a neural constellation built from flavor, touch, and inheritance, where recipes become maps of memory. Each cluster traces how identity is shaped through what we make, share, and carry forward.

A grounded cluster of patience, labor, and decadence, Slow & Low draws from Southern culinary traditions shaped by time, heat, and care, where cooking becomes an act of tending.

Smoke, sugar, fat, fire, flavors developed slowly, drawn out and deepened over time. The body is present in rhythm, hands turning, checking, waiting, where transformation is not forced, but allowed.

It holds the weight of time and reward, where what begins tough becomes tender. Food settles here like heat, low, steady, and sustaining, shaped through patience, and meant to be savored.

Bronze

14” x 6” x 4.5”

2021-2022

Editions Available; E-mail with inquiry

Family Recipe is a neural constellation built from flavor, touch, and inheritance, where recipes become maps of memory. Each cluster traces how identity is shaped through what we make, share, and carry forward.

A soft cluster of instinct, joy, and indulgence, Sweet Tooth draws from the ritual of dessert, where sweetness becomes an act of pleasure rather than necessity.

Sugar, cream, fruit, spice, flavors built through feeling rather than measurement. The body learns through instinct, tasting, adjusting, remembering, where making is guided as much by desire as by tradition.

It holds the space of celebration and release, where restraint loosens, and joy takes priority. Food lingers here like sweetness, shared, anticipated, and felt beyond the moment it’s gone.

Bronze

11” x 6” x 4”

2021-2022

Editions Available; E-mail with inquiry

Family Recipe is a neural constellation built from flavor, touch, and inheritance, where recipes become maps of memory. Each cluster traces how identity is shaped through what we make, share, and carry forward.

A temporal cluster of instinct, connection, and immediacy, Ripe Now draws from fruit as both cultural symbol and material, tied to land, season, and the body, where fruit marks the ripeness of timing.

Fruit, flesh, sugar, acid, and flavors encountered at their peak, without delay or intervention. The body responds through instinct, picking, tasting, and knowing, where recognition happens without instruction.

It holds the cycle of ripeness and return, where what is taken is temporary, moving from the ground to the body and back again. The momentum of life exists here like fruit, immediate, perishable, and meant to be met at the moment it is ready.

Bronze

7” x 7” x 9”

2023

Available: E-mail with Inquiry 

This work explores memory through the lens of the Proust effect, the phenomenon in which sensory experiences, particularly taste and smell, trigger vivid and involuntary recollections. Rooted in the cultural ritual of late-night meals at Waffle House, the sculpture draws on the familiar language of ordering hash-browns “smothered and covered,” where layering becomes both customization and memory-making.

Lugo draws inspiration from sticky Southern nights, those in-between hours filled with heat, movement, and the pull of late-night cravings, where experience is heightened and easily imprinted. The sculpture captures how these moments are stored not as fixed narratives, but as sensory fragments: taste, smell, texture, atmosphere.

Organic, edible forms merge with architectural structures, suggesting the way experiences are both physically felt and cognitively organized. The mouth emerges as a threshold, where sensation is taken in, transformed, and encoded, positioning the body as both participant and archive.

Southern, Smothered and Covered operates as both a cultural reference and a neurological metaphor: layers of flavor echo layers of memory, accumulating, dissolving, and reconfiguring over time. In this way, the work reflects how memory is not static, but continuously rewritten, shaped by sensation, environment, and shared experience.

Forton

20” x 14.5” x 4.5”

2022

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Private Collector: Nags Head, North Carolina (2nd Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

Finding My Way Home is inspired by the ways Indigenous seafarers used the stars as a three-dimensional compass to navigate the Caribbean and Oceania. These navigators memorized and followed Havienga, or linear star paths, constellations that run perpendicular to the horizon and align with specific destinations. Passed down through generations by oral tradition, this knowledge reflects a system of navigation rooted not in fixed coordinates, but in memory, relationship, and trust in what cannot always be fully seen.

The sculpture is composed of a palm leaf and an oyster from St. George Island, Florida—a place that has come to define the artist’s understanding of home through a lifetime of return. The palm leaf echoes the structure of these star paths. At the same time, the oyster becomes both vessel and origin, suggesting a body moving through open water while simultaneously holding and forming life. By bringing together ancestral knowledge from her Taíno heritage with personal geography, Lugo collapses past and present into a shared system of orientation.

These constellations are not universal; they shift depending on where one stands and how the sky is perceived. In this way, the work becomes a meditation on perspective: how experience, environment, and cultural inheritance shape the ways we move through the world.

As in life, much remains outside of our control, yet still requires navigation. The three-dimensional celestial compass used by these seafarers becomes a mirror for an internal one, shaped by memory, intuition, and experience. By navigating the ever-shifting paths of life, we are guided not only toward a destination but also back to ourselves. Even when moving through uncertain waters, we are never truly lost. We are simply finding our way home.

Bronze, Amethyst

12” x 10” x 24”

2023

Private Collector: Dallas, Texas

In Harmony of Bacchus, Lugo draws from the Greek myth of amethyst, a stone said to have been formed to protect against intoxication, reframing it as a meditation on balance rather than restraint. Suspended between excess and control, the work explores the fragile equilibrium between surrender and self-possession.

A monumental amethyst cluster rests in outstretched hands, its crystalline structure emerging from a network of geometric forms. Lugo’s recurring hexagonal frameworks, echoing molecular bonds, neural pathways, and cosmic lattices, act as a connective architecture, bridging the material and the immaterial, the bodily and the celestial. These forms suggest that what we experience as emotion, memory, or indulgence is not chaotic, but patterned, held within invisible systems that organize both the mind and the universe.

Here, intoxication is not limited to the physical. It becomes a state of perception: the overwhelming beauty of sensation, memory, desire, and awe. The hands, both offering and receiving, hold this weight delicately, suggesting reverence rather than control.

Rather than resisting excess, Lugo proposes harmony within it. The amethyst does not deny indulgence; it transforms it. What emerges is a recalibration, a moment where chaos, chemistry, and consciousness align.

In this way, Harmony of Bacchus becomes less about myth as narrative, and more about myth as structure: a system through which the human experience, pleasure, restraint, memory, and transformation can be held, understood, and reimagined.

Bronze

16.5” x 13.5” x 12”

2023

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

Ripe for the Taking overturns the traditional still life, both physically and conceptually. What once symbolized abundance, control, and quiet perfection collapses into motion, spilling beyond its own containment. The fruit is no longer arranged for passive admiration; it is released, unruly, and caught in the act of becoming.

In Lugo’s hands, the still life refuses stillness. The vessel tips, the composition fractures, and order gives way to something more visceral. What emerges is a charged moment of rupture, where desire overrides restraint and preservation dissolves into presence. The fruit, no longer idealized, becomes embodied: bruised, exposed, excessive, and undeniably alive.

This “not-so-still life” resists the expectation to be held, perfected, or consumed neatly. Instead, it lingers in the tension between indulgence and decay, beauty and collapse, control and surrender. It asks not to be preserved, but to be experienced.

What is ripe is not the fruit, but the moment itself, full, fleeting, and impossible to contain. In letting everything spill, Lugo reframes abundance as something that must be taken, felt, and risked before it disappears.

Forton and Acrylic

21” x 11” x 4.5”

2022

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

Organic, branching forms emerge from a central trunk, echoing fungal growth and neural pathways, while clustered spheres act as nodes, points of accumulation, exchange, and transformation. Rooted in the logic of mycorrhizal networks, these forms reference the symbiotic systems through which trees and fungi exchange nutrients and information, suggesting a shared architecture between ecological, cognitive, and cosmic structures. Translucent ribbons weave through the sculpture like trails of light, tracing movement through space in a way that feels both physical and ephemeral.

The work draws from the concept of Dark Cloud Constellations, cosmic narratives formed not by stars, but by the spaces between them. In this way, Trails considers how meaning is often found in absence, in the unseen structures that shape experience. This logic extends inward, reflecting the navigation of one’s own internal landscape, where clarity is not always found in moments of brightness, but in learning to move through darkness.

Inspired by walking through the forest at dusk, the sculpture reflects the disorienting yet guiding presence of fireflies, points of light that appear before night fully arrives. These fleeting illuminations become a metaphor for intuition and inherited knowledge: subtle signals that guide movement through shifting states of visibility, while also mimicking the transmission of information across synaptic networks in the brain.

Operating between micro and macro scales, Trails proposes a relational understanding of existence, where interconnected systems, both internal and external, offer orientation even in moments of uncertainty. Rather than resisting darkness, the work suggests that navigation emerges through it, guided by the networks that quietly hold and connect us.

Bronze

6” x 7” x 9”

2022

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Private Collector: Memphis, Tennessee (2nd Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

This work explores memory and perception through the lens of the Proust effect, the phenomenon in which sensory experiences, particularly taste and smell, evoke vivid and involuntary recollections. Here, memory is approached less as a specific narrative and more as a symbolic and embodied experience.

The peach serves as both personal and cultural reference, paying tribute to the artist’s home state of Georgia while evoking the familiarity of taste, texture, and seasonal memory. Suspended within a geometric framework and supported by the hand, the form exists between the organic and the structured, suggesting the way lived experience is both felt and mentally organized.

A single bite breaks the fruit's surface, introducing a moment of risk and transformation. This gesture alludes to the idea of “biting off more than you can chew,” positioning desire, curiosity, and consequence as catalysts for memory formation. The act of consumption becomes an act of knowing.

In Just Peachy, the body, object, and structure converge to reflect how memory is shaped through interaction, sensory, physical, and cognitive experiences, revealing experience as both intimate and continually reinterpreted.

Bronze

3” x 4” x 6”

2022

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia  (2nd Edition)

Private Collector: St.Petersburg, Florida (3rd Edition) 

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

This work is part of Lugo’s ongoing exploration of memory through the Proust effect, in which sensory experience triggers vivid, involuntary recollection. On the Half Shell draws from the artist’s childhood on St. George Island, Florida, where oysters from Apalachicola Bay are both a daily ritual and a cultural constant.

Within her family, gathering by the water, eating oysters, listening to music, and lingering in the rhythm of the coast become a cornerstone memory. These experiences accumulate over time, shaping a sense of place through repetition and shared presence.

The oyster itself becomes a container for this process: partially opened, never fully revealed. On the Half Shellsuggests a state of in-between, where something is exposed, but not complete, mirroring the way memory is continually revisited and reshaped.

Along the coast, discarded shells are folded back into the landscape, forming roads and foundations. In this way, what is consumed becomes structure. Lugo’s sculpture reflects this same transformation, positioning memory as both residue and framework, something built from experience, and lived within over time.

Bronze

3.5” x 3.5” x 8.5”

2022

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Private Collector: Palm Springs, California  (2nd Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

This work is part of Lugo’s ongoing exploration of memory through the Proust effect, in which sensory experiences trigger vivid, involuntary recollections. In Lemon Pepper Wet, memory emerges not only from what is celebrated but also from what is left behind.

Referencing the iconic Atlanta wing flavor “lemon pepper wet,” the sculpture transforms the remains of a meal into an artifact. Inspired by the scattered chicken bones commonly found on city sidewalks, the work offers a humorous yet affectionate nod to the everyday textures of place, those small, often overlooked details that quietly define communal culture.

Rendered in polished bronze, what is typically considered disposable is elevated into something permanent and luminous. This shift reframes the discarded as a relic, evidence of a moment that once held flavor, movement, and social exchange. In doing so, the work reflects how memory operates: even the most mundane or absurd experiences can become deeply embedded within personal and collective identity.

What might initially register as an inconvenience or excess becomes, over time and distance, strangely endearing. The absence of these familiar traces reveals their significance, transforming them into markers of belonging. Through humor and material transformation, Lemon Pepper Wet celebrates the absurdities of daily life and the unexpected ways they come to define home.

Bronze, Kinetic Sculpture

8” x 8 “ x 4”

2022

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia

This kinetic wall sculpture is rooted in the fleeting memory of a child taking their first steps, an attempt to hold a moment that, by nature, cannot be held. Cast in a permanent material, the work translates a passing experience into something enduring, mirroring how memory is stored in the brain.

As the sculpture spins, the legs move continuously, creating the illusion of walking. This motion allows the moment to be revisited again and again, not as a fixed image, but as a lived experience, looping, active, and alive.

Rather than freezing time, the work preserves its momentum. It offers a way to relive small, intimate moments that inevitably pass, allowing them to endure not as static records, but as continuous, embodied memories.

Bronze

11” x 8.5” x 5”

2020

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia 

Lugo’s Constellation series marks an early exploration of neural constellations, where memory is understood not as something fixed, but as something actively forming. These works consider what memory looks like as it is being stored within the brain, fleeting moments of experience translated into lasting, tangible form. Each sculpture draws a parallel between neural networks and celestial constellations, positioning both as systems that organize fragments into meaning.

Anatomical elements, mouths, hands, and faces appear in isolation, embedded within geometric structures that reference both molecular and cosmic frameworks. These fragments act as sensory markers: a taste, a gesture, a moment of recognition. Not a complete narrative, but pieces held and carried. The work experiments with perspective and fragmentation, exploring how reality is assembled rather than received. Memory operates as a constellation, built from fragments, structured through connection, and never fully complete.

Bronze

12” x 12” x 24”

2018

Private Collector: Roswell, Georgia (1st Edition)

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry  

Sculpture created in tandem with original poem below

Let Me Taste Your Dreams

I can feel you running through my fingers, 

slipping through my thoughts,

and permeating through my soul

There is just something I can not shake about this feeling

All I want to do is hold onto this moment

but it all feels so fleeting

In my dreams, I am holding you up

As if you were a shining chalice overflowing with intoxicating experience

Just waiting for me to consume you

Yet I wonder,

How is it possible for something to be so tangibly intangible?

I want to feel my tastebuds swell

Let me Taste your dreams 

Let Me Taste Your Dreams explores the tension between desire and ephemerality—how something can feel physically present while remaining just out of reach. The sculpture treats sensation as something that moves between body and mind, where taste becomes a metaphor for memory, longing, and intimacy.

Fragments of the body—hands, mouth, gesture—are positioned in relation to a reflective, vessel-like form, suggesting both offering and consumption. What is held is not fixed, but fleeting—something experienced in passing, yet deeply felt. The work considers how we attempt to hold onto moments that are inherently unstable, and how desire often exists most intensely in what cannot be fully grasped.

Bronze

12” x 12” x 6.5”

2020

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia 

Lugo’s Constellation series marks an early exploration of neural constellations, where memory is understood not as something fixed, but as something actively forming. These works consider what memory looks like as it is being stored within the brain, fleeting moments of experience translated into lasting, tangible form. Each sculpture draws a parallel between neural networks and celestial constellations, positioning both as systems that organize fragments into meaning.

Anatomical elements, mouths, hands, and faces appear in isolation, embedded within geometric structures that reference both molecular and cosmic frameworks. These fragments act as sensory markers: a taste, a gesture, a moment of recognition. Not a complete narrative, but pieces held and carried. The work experiments with perspective and fragmentation, exploring how reality is assembled rather than received. Memory operates as a constellation, built from fragments, structured through connection, and never fully complete.

Bronze and Epoxy

14” x 12” x 24'“

2018

Available; E-mail with Inquiry

Sculpture created in tandem with original poem below:

Cambium of the Self 

Am i growing into myself or further into myself?

Am i becoming the person who I should be or am I staying who I have always been?

As my roots drive further within,

solidifying my stability

My branches are reaching out,

reaching for the newness and light to inspire growth

Am i growing from my past or hiding behind it?

I hold on to the ghosts of my past 

Why do I think this shields me from the present? 

Do you ever think about the way trees grow?

The cambium is the sweet spot

From which the bark grows outwards

Leaving the old cracked facade to fall and fertilize the soil

Where in the same spot the the trunk grows inward

Expanding around the oldest part of the tree, the core

There is something so deeply beautiful about this spot of simultaneous growth

This feels so applicable 

I guess really I am growing into myself while growing further into myself

In both ways, at the same time

Taking inspiration from the tree

This is the cambium of the self

Cambium of the Self reflects on the tension between becoming and remaining—holding space for the self as both something that grows outward and deepens inward. A solitary figure balances along a branching form, holding a translucent mask that hovers between concealment and recognition. The surrounding geometric structures suggest the frameworks—both organic and constructed—that shape our sense of identity over time.

Inspired by the cambium layer of a tree, where growth occurs simultaneously in opposing directions, the work considers transformation as a continuous, layered process. Rather than a fixed state, the self is revealed as something in flux—expanding, shedding, and reforming all at once.

Bronze

9” x 7” x 7”

2020

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia 

Lugo’s Constellation series marks an early exploration of neural constellations, where memory is understood not as something fixed, but as something actively forming. These works consider what memory looks like as it is being stored within the brain, fleeting moments of experience translated into lasting, tangible form. Each sculpture draws a parallel between neural networks and celestial constellations, positioning both as systems that organize fragments into meaning.

Anatomical elements, mouths, hands, and faces appear in isolation, embedded within geometric structures that reference both molecular and cosmic frameworks. These fragments act as sensory markers: a taste, a gesture, a moment of recognition. Not a complete narrative, but pieces held and carried. The work experiments with perspective and fragmentation, exploring how reality is assembled rather than received. Memory operates as a constellation, built from fragments, structured through connection, and never fully complete.

Aluminum

22" x 12", 17" x 11", 21" x 8" 

2017

Public Collection: Fulton County Public Art Permanent Collection, Atlanta, GA

On View: Emma Darnell Aviation Museum and Conference Center, Fulton County Airport, Atlanta, Georgia

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry

Future Memories explores the fleeting nature of conscious thought and the shared experience of introspection. Rooted in the act of “thinking about thinking,” the work reflects on the elusive and unexplainable nature of human consciousness—something universally experienced yet impossible to fully define.

The sculpture translates this intangible process into physical form. Fabricated aluminum prisms, referencing molecular structures and unconscious bodily functions, create a rigid framework through which a fluid, gestural cast form moves. This central form embodies the continuous, ungraspable flow of conscious thought.

Interwoven faces emerge throughout the surface, suggesting the repetition and evolution of a single idea as it transforms into memory. Each face represents a moment within a larger cognitive cycle—thought becoming experience, experience becoming memory.

By externalizing this internal process, Future Memories invites viewers into a shared moment of awareness, where the invisible act of thinking becomes something collective, tangible, and deeply human.

Bronze

7” x 12” x 5”

2020

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia 

Lugo’s Constellation series marks an early exploration of neural constellations, where memory is understood not as something fixed, but as something actively forming. These works consider what memory looks like as it is being stored within the brain, fleeting moments of experience translated into lasting, tangible form. Each sculpture draws a parallel between neural networks and celestial constellations, positioning both as systems that organize fragments into meaning.

Anatomical elements, mouths, hands, and faces appear in isolation, embedded within geometric structures that reference both molecular and cosmic frameworks. These fragments act as sensory markers: a taste, a gesture, a moment of recognition. Not a complete narrative, but pieces held and carried. The work experiments with perspective and fragmentation, exploring how reality is assembled rather than received. Memory operates as a constellation, built from fragments, structured through connection, and never fully complete.

Aluminum and Steel

21” x 12” x 28”

2017

Permanent Location: Salzwedel Mönchskirche Museum, Atelierhaus Hilmsen, Hilmsen, Germany

Previous Location: Novilla, Moving Poets, Berlin, Germany

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry

Future Memories explores the fleeting nature of conscious thought and the shared experience of introspection. Rooted in the act of “thinking about thinking,” the work reflects on the elusive and unexplainable nature of human consciousness—something universally experienced yet impossible to fully define.

The sculpture translates this intangible process into physical form. Fabricated aluminum prisms, referencing molecular structures and unconscious bodily functions, create a rigid framework through which a fluid, gestural cast form moves. This central form embodies the continuous, ungraspable flow of conscious thought.

Interwoven faces emerge throughout the surface, suggesting the repetition and evolution of a single idea as it transforms into memory. Each face represents a moment within a larger cognitive cycle—thought becoming experience, experience becoming memory.

By externalizing this internal process, Future Memories invites viewers into a shared moment of awareness, where the invisible act of thinking becomes something collective, tangible, and deeply human.

Bronze

11” x 8” x 6.5”

2020

Private Collector: Atlanta, Georgia 

Lugo’s Constellation series marks an early exploration of neural constellations, where memory is understood not as something fixed, but as something actively forming. These works consider what memory looks like as it is being stored within the brain, fleeting moments of experience translated into lasting, tangible form. Each sculpture draws a parallel between neural networks and celestial constellations, positioning both as systems that organize fragments into meaning.

Anatomical elements, mouths, hands, and faces appear in isolation, embedded within geometric structures that reference both molecular and cosmic frameworks. These fragments act as sensory markers: a taste, a gesture, a moment of recognition. Not a complete narrative, but pieces held and carried. The work experiments with perspective and fragmentation, exploring how reality is assembled rather than received. Memory operates as a constellation, built from fragments, structured through connection, and never fully complete.

Bronze, Bone, and Concrete

6” x 9” x 18”

2018

Private Collector - Dallas, Texas

Finding Balance #2 explores the fragile, constant negotiation between internal self and external experience. Using cow scapula paired with a cast bronze inclusion, each piece becomes a study in weight, tension, and equilibrium.

The bones—once functional and whole—are interrupted and rebalanced through bronze elements that act as both counterweight and connection. These moments of intervention reflect how we adapt, shifting ourselves in response to the world around us while still trying to remain grounded.

Each sculpture balances on a single point atop a concrete sphere, reducing everything to the present moment—the only place where balance can exist. It’s a quiet but active tension, where stability is never fixed, only maintained.

Rather than something we achieve, balance is treated as an ongoing process—delicate, responsive, and deeply personal.

Cast Aluminum, Inclusion Cast Concrete In Epoxy, Fabricated Steel

12" x 12" x 53"

2016

Private collector - Dallas, Texas

Reflection explores the layered and ever-shifting landscape of the mind. The bust of a fictional figure is constructed from intertwining tendrils, hollowed forms, and embedded faces—each representing fragments of memory, emotion, and lived experience.

The front presents a composed exterior—the version of self offered to the world. As the form unfolds, it reveals a more chaotic interior: doubt, fear, curiosity, and subconscious thought woven into the structure itself.

Rather than separating these states, the sculpture embraces their coexistence. Each element builds upon the next, suggesting that identity is not singular, but accumulated—formed through the continuous layering of experience.

Through this process of deconstruction and reconstruction, Reflection becomes a physical manifestation of the intangible mental landscape—fluid, complex, and constantly in flux.

Bronze, Bone, Concrete and Steel Rod

15” x 20” x 40”

2017

Private collector: Atlanta, Georgia (1st Edition)

Private Collector: St. Geroge Island, Flordia (2nd Edition)

Previously on Display: The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

Finding Balance explores the fragile, constant negotiation between internal self and external experience. Using a cow hip bone paired with cast bronze inclusions, each piece becomes a study in weight, tension, and equilibrium.

The bones—once functional and whole—are interrupted and rebalanced through bronze elements that act as both counterweight and connection. These moments of intervention reflect how we adapt, shifting ourselves in response to the world around us while still trying to remain grounded.

Each sculpture balances on a single point atop a concrete sphere, reducing everything to the present moment—the only place where balance can exist. It’s a quiet but active tension, where stability is never fixed, only maintained.

Rather than something we achieve, balance is treated as an ongoing process—delicate, responsive, and deeply personal.

Wood, Concrete, Moss, Resin and Steel Rod

15”x20”x50”

2014

Private Collector- Atlanta, Georgia

Previously on Display: The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

Conflicting Interests explores the tension between what we feel and what we think—an ongoing negotiation between the heart and the mind. The wood form acts as the body’s core, grounding the work in something organic and instinctual, while the concrete hands emerge as extensions of thought—restless, searching, and unresolved.

The hands reach, curl, and strain in multiple directions, making it unclear whether they are growing or decaying. This ambiguity reflects the constant cycle of ideas forming, dissolving, and reforming—where clarity and confusion exist simultaneously.

This internal conflict is mirrored externally through the relationship between nature and industry. As organic and constructed elements intertwine, the work draws a parallel between personal decision-making and larger environmental tensions.

Rather than resolving the conflict, the sculpture holds it in place—capturing the fragile, continuous effort of finding balance within a system that is always shifting.

Cast Iron, Concrete, Moss, Mirror, Steel Rod, Wood and Wax Oil

40” x 40” x 86”

2015

Private Collector - Marietta, Georgia 

Previously on Display: The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

Reflecting Pool brings together recurring tensions in my work—industry and nature, life and death, destruction and regrowth—into a suspended moment of transformation. A cast iron cow spine wraps around a charred tree, suggesting both a remnant of mortality and a structure for renewal, as if decay itself becomes the framework for new growth.

The composition exists in a state of in-between: neither fully ruined nor fully restored. The spine, once a support system for life, now reanimates the burnt form, blurring the boundary between what has ended and what is beginning again.

A mirrored base functions as a literal and conceptual reflecting pool, pulling the viewer into the work. By seeing themselves within it, the viewer becomes part of the cycle—caught between growth and decay, past and future. The reflection suggests that these futures are not distant, but familiar—patterns we are already living.

The piece ultimately asks for awareness: of the cycles we participate in, both externally in the world and internally within ourselves.

Cement, Wood, Moss, Succulents, Terrariums, Skulls and Plasticine

5 pieces approximately 12” x 18” x 60” each

2013

Private collector - Atlanta, Georgia

Previously on Display: The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

Coexistence explores the cyclical tension between human intervention and natural regeneration. Rather than existing as opposing forces, urban development and ecological growth operate within a shared system—each dependent on the disruption of the other.

As land is cleared and reshaped for human use, natural systems are displaced, fragmented, and buried. Yet over time, these constructed environments decay, allowing nature to re-emerge—reclaiming space, reintroducing life, and restructuring what was once controlled. This ongoing exchange forms a continuous loop: destruction becomes opportunity, and loss becomes regeneration.

The work merges organic and constructed materials to embody this instability. Fragmented human forms are overtaken by moss, lichen, and preserved ecological elements, suggesting that identity—like landscape—is not fixed, but constantly rewritten through time and environment. Glass domes act as both protective vessels and barriers, questioning what it means to preserve something that is inherently in flux.

Rather than framing nature and humanity as adversaries, Coexistence presents them as entangled systems—locked in a perpetual rhythm of erasure and renewal.

Bronze, Cement, Steel Rod, Resin, Graphite, Tree and Foam

15” x 17” x 40”

2015

Private Collector - Charleston, South Carolina

Lucid captures the liminal threshold between waking and dreaming—the fleeting moment when consciousness begins to dissolve and reality softens into something more fluid.

In this state, thought becomes both expansive and unstable. Logic loosens, associations stretch, and the mind drifts into a space where clarity and distortion coexist. It is a moment where ideas feel weightless—where complex problems unravel into unexpected simplicity, and meaning emerges not through control, but through surrender.

The sculpture embodies this shifting terrain. A split face suggests dual awareness, caught between presence and detachment, while branching, organic forms extend outward like thought pathways in flux. The encroaching material blurs boundaries between structure and dissolution, mirroring the mind’s transition from coherence to dream.

Rather than choosing between reality and surreality, Lucid exists within their overlap—suggesting that creativity is not found in either state alone, but in the movement between them.

Porcelain

15” x 28” x 10”

 2013

Private Collector -  Atlanta, Georgia

Atlantis explores classical antiquity, the loss of identity, and the transformation of inherited ideals over time. Referencing the historical pursuit of the “perfect form,” the work considers what happens when those ideals erode, mutate, or are forgotten altogether.

Fragments of the human face—once whole—are fused and collapsed into one another, suggesting the instability of identity when shaped by external standards of perfection. These forms are overtaken by coral-like growth and marine organisms, evoking a submerged world where time continues to move, even in abandonment.

The presence of these organisms is not purely destructive, but generative. As the original form dissolves, new life emerges—suggesting that loss is not an end, but a transformation. What was once fixed becomes fluid.

Atlantis reflects on the tension between preservation and change, asking whether the pursuit of perfection erases individuality, or whether its collapse allows for something more complex—and alive—to take its place.

Bronze, Foam, Graphite, Resin, Concrete and Steel Rod

10”x12”x45”

2014

Private Collector - Tampa, Florida

Fading exists in the suspended moment just before consciousness dissolves—where reality loosens and perception begins to slip. Inspired by a severe concussion I sustained in 2014, the piece captures that fragile threshold where the mind fractures, doubles, and drifts out of sync with the body.

Though rooted in a traumatic experience, this work is not about loss—it is about return. It marks the slow, disorienting process of finding myself again after nearly a year of healing. The distorted, splitting features echo both the instability of memory and the strange elasticity of identity during that time.

There is a quiet irony in preserving a moment I cannot fully remember. In response, I chose to work in permanent materials—anchoring what was fleeting, giving form to something that lived between presence and absence.

Fading is not a mourning, but a recognition: that even in fragmentation, something within me remained intact—waiting to reassemble.

Wood, Metal, Flocking, Resin and Repurposed Kiln Bricks

16" x 16" x 70"

2014

Private collector - Buckhead, Georgia

Previously on Display: The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

Industrialization explores the repeating cycle between urban development and natural growth. Industry expands into the forest, clearing and constructing in pursuit of permanence, yet over time those structures decay, allowing the landscape to slowly reclaim what was taken. As new development emerges, the process begins again.

This piece reflects that tension through both material and process. Industrial elements are used to stabilize and preserve a fragment of a tree, yet doing so requires cutting into and restructuring it—mirroring the very disruption it attempts to contain.

The work exists within this continuous exchange: growth, extraction, decay, and return. Rather than opposing forces, nature and industry are bound together, each reshaping the other over time.

Bone, Bronze, Wood, Concrete, Steel Rod and Moss

8” x 20” x 54”

2014

Private Collector - Savannah, GA

Continuance explores the shared structures and cycles that connect all living systems. The piece originated from found materials—a vertebral spine and a fragment of wood—both encountered in similar states of return, resting within the natural environment.

Their parallel forms revealed an unexpected symmetry. The rhythmic protrusions of the wood mirror the articulation of the spine, suggesting that plant and animal life, though materially distinct, follow comparable patterns of growth, structure, and decay. What appears separate begins to collapse into a shared language of form.

This relationship extends beyond structure into time. Both elements exist within a larger cycle—emerging, deteriorating, and ultimately reintegrating into the earth. In contrast, the cast bronze element introduces a different temporal condition. Known for its durability, it resists decay, acting as a fixed record within an otherwise transient system.

By combining ephemeral and enduring materials, Continuance reflects on the persistence of life through transformation. What decays does not disappear—it becomes the foundation for what follows, allowing life to move forward in an unbroken cycle.

Steel, Flocking, Moss and Found Wood

12” x 12” x 48”

2013

Private Collector - Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Am I in Network? examines the hidden systems that connect and sustain life. Steel-fabricated fungal forms emerge from a weathered telephone pole, drawing parallels between mycelium networks in forests and human-built infrastructures like electrical grids and communication systems.

Just as mycelium transfers nutrients and signals across vast underground networks, human systems distribute energy and information through equally complex, unseen pathways. Both rely on connection, yet both exist in a delicate balance between symbiosis and extraction.

The telephone pole becomes a hybrid structure—once a conduit for human connection, now functioning like a host organism. The steel fungi suggest continuous growth, raising questions about whether these expanding networks nourish or deplete what they depend on.

By aligning biological and technological systems, the work reflects on our place within these networks—where support, consumption, and coexistence are constantly in flux.

Fabric, Wood and Video Installation

60” x 42” x 36”

2013

Motions of Mutation is my first work incorporating video installation, using a sculptural wall piece to fracture and distort projected imagery. Rather than presenting video as a flat, fixed surface, the form bends and redirects it—creating new images through mutation rather than addition.

The footage, sourced from Microcosms, reveals the intimate and often overlooked world of insects. By shifting their scale, these small, easily dismissed moments—rainfall, movement, survival—take on an unexpected emotional weight. What once felt distant becomes immediate, almost bodily.

The warped projection disrupts recognition, asking the viewer to question what they are seeing and how they relate to it. Familiar forms dissolve into abstraction, hovering between comprehension and disorientation.

Through this interplay of sculpture and video, the work collapses multiple perspectives into one space—blurring the boundary between observer and subject, and revealing how perception itself is constantly in flux.

Ceramic

18” x 18” x 40”

2013

Private collector - Atlanta, Georgia

Sculptural Graffiti is a rotating installation that relocates sculpture from the gallery into the streets of Atlanta. Rather than confining the work to institutional spaces, the piece is placed directly within everyday environments—rail lines, sidewalks, and overlooked corners—where it can be encountered unexpectedly.

The project challenges the perceived divide between “high” and “low” art by merging sculptural form with the logic of graffiti: movement, impermanence, and accessibility. By situating a three-dimensional object in spaces typically reserved for transient marks, the work redefines who art is for and where it belongs.

Each placement becomes a new context, allowing the sculpture to shift meaning depending on its surroundings and audience. In this way, the work exists not as a fixed object, but as an evolving interaction between site, viewer, and time.

 Hydrocal, Fabric, Steel

 28” x 40” x 55”

2017

Private Collector - Atlanta, Georgia

Future Memories (In Progression) explores the experience of introspective consciousness—what it means to think, and to be aware of thinking. It begins with a simple but unresolvable question: how do we understand something as familiar and immediate as consciousness, when it remains fundamentally unexplainable?

This work attempts to give physical form to that paradox. The structure is composed of fabricated steel hexagonal prisms that reference molecular systems—the underlying architecture of the brain and its unconscious processes. Interwoven through this rigid framework is a gestural, fabric-like form made from Hydrocal and repurposed textiles. This softer, amorphous material represents the fluid, intangible movement of thought as it unfolds in the mind.

Embedded throughout the form are repeating female faces, suggesting the fragmentation and continuity of identity as a single thought evolves into memory. Each face marks a moment—part of a larger internal sequence that is constantly shifting, dissolving, and reforming.

Future Memories (In Progression) translates the private experience of consciousness into a shared, physical encounter. By externalizing thought, the work invites viewers into a collective moment of recognition—where something inherently individual becomes briefly universal.

Watercolor

26" x 26"

2014

Private collector - Asheville, North Carolina

This watercolor explores the convergence of identity, memory, and transformation through symbolic portraiture. The figure emerges from a shifting landscape of color and form, where flowing strands blur the boundary between the internal and external self. Antler-like forms extend from the head, suggesting growth, intuition, and a connection to the natural world, while the circular composition evokes cycles—of time, perception, and becoming.

Layered behind the figure, organic patterns echo both biological and cosmic structures, reinforcing the idea that personal identity is shaped within larger systems. The work exists in a space between stillness and motion, where the self is not fixed, but continuously unfolding.

Ceramic and Hemp Installation

20’ x 15’ Installation

2012

Private collector - Florence, Italy

Previously Installed at: Giardino della Fortezza, Florence, Italy

While studying in Florence, I became deeply attuned to the city’s slower rhythm—its ability to hold space for stillness within movement. In response, I created a temporary installation designed as a site of quiet reflection within the urban environment.

Handmade mandala forms and sculpted eyes were suspended within a tree, moving gently with the wind. The work invited viewers to pause, creating a moment where the boundaries between observer, object, and environment begin to dissolve. As the forms swayed, they echoed the subtle movements of the body—breath, attention, awareness—drawing the viewer into a more meditative state.

The eyes act as both symbols of perception and mirrors of self-awareness, while the mandalas reference cycles, continuity, and internal focus. Together, they create a space where looking becomes reciprocal: the viewer observes the work, and in turn becomes aware of being observed.

Rather than functioning as a static object, the installation exists as an experience—one shaped by time, movement, and the presence of the individual within it.

Watercolor on Handcrafted Frames and Hand stretched Watercolor Paper

42” x 42”

2014

Private Collector - Roswell, Georgia

Animal Instincts is a watercolor triptych created during finals week, capturing a mental state of overwhelm, frustration, and emotional exhaustion. The three panels interlock, allowing each figure to flow into the next, mirroring how these feelings blur together in moments of heightened stress.

Each face represents a different facet of that experience—tension, agitation, and depletion—while the vibrant, fluid color palette contrasts the heaviness of the subject matter. This tension between intensity and play becomes central to the work.

Although rooted in a challenging emotional state, the piece also marks a moment of release. Stepping outside of my primary sculptural practice, I approached painting with a sense of freedom and humor, allowing instinct to guide the process. In doing so, the work transforms exhaustion into something expressive and dynamic, embracing the chaos rather than resisting it.

Acrylic Paint, Plastic Wrap, Photo Collage, Wire and Yarn

2012

42”x 26"

Private collector - Atlanta, Georgia 

Me, Myself, and Eye challenges the idea that identity is rooted in physical appearance. Rather than presenting a likeness, the work reflects a self shaped by lived experience—by the people, moments, and memories that leave lasting impressions over time.

The composition is built from a photo-collage of personal experiences, layering fragments of connection, joy, and difficulty into a collective portrait of becoming. These moments, whether positive or painful, are treated as equally essential—each one contributing to a deeper understanding of self.

The three-dimensional hair extends outward from the surface, physically bridging the space between the work and the viewer. This gesture collapses time, connecting the person I was during the creation of the piece with the present moment and those engaging with it now. In this way, the work becomes less about a fixed identity and more about an evolving one—formed continuously through memory, relationship, and experience.

Acrylic

10” x 11” x 13”

2023

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

These bubble sculptures emerge from Lugo’s childhood memories of blowing bubbles in the park, fleeting forms that once felt monumental, just out of reach, suspended between play and impossibility. What was once a simple act becomes, in retrospect, an early encounter with scale, perception, and the illusion of permanence.

In this body of work, the bubble becomes both a personal and a cosmological structure. Drawing from the concept of “bubble universes” within the theory of eternal inflation, each form becomes a self-contained world, distinct yet intimately connected to the larger whole. These clustered volumes echo the logic found throughout Lugo’s practice: systems within systems, bodies within bodies, universes nested inside one another.

The soft, swollen geometry of the sculptures resists rigid structure, instead embracing a fluid, cellular language that mirrors both organic growth and cosmic expansion. Their surfaces hold subtle variations, evidence of time, touch, and process, reinforcing the tension between permanence and ephemerality that defines Lugo’s work.

At a human scale, these forms become a meditation on shared experience. Much like parallel universes, we occupy the same physical world while perceiving it through entirely different lenses. Each “bubble” suggests an individual reality shaped by memory, culture, and perspective, yet inseparable from the collective environment that holds it.

By grounding theoretical physics in embodied memory, Lugo creates a space where the intimate and the infinite collapse into one another, where a childhood gesture expands into a model for understanding the structure of existence itself.

Inaugural Museum Solo show presented by Morgan Lugo

April 21 - July 11, 2024

The Metal Museum

Tributaries Series

Memphis, Tennessee

It’s All Relative, a solo exhibition by Morgan Lugo, examines how time, memory, and perception operate across interconnected systems. Moving between the microcosm of the human mind, the meso-scale networks of the natural world, and the macrocosm of the universe, the work traces the repetition of form and function across vastly different scales.

Across these realms—neural pathways, mycorrhizal networks, and cosmic filaments—shared structures emerge: branching, expansion, collapse, and regeneration. These patterns reveal that the ways we process experience are not isolated, but embedded within larger systems that govern both the natural world and the cosmos.

Grounded in principles inspired by General Theory of Relativity, the exhibition considers how space and time are not fixed, but shaped through interaction and perception. External experiences unfold within space and time, then transform into internal memory—continuously reshaping personal identity.

The work positions time not as linear, but as something felt, stored, and reinterpreted. Each interaction becomes part of an evolving network of meaning, where the boundaries between past, present, and future begin to blur.

It’s All Relative reflects on the fluid relationship between inner and outer worlds—where the micro mirrors the macro, the individual reflects the collective, and reality is continuously constructed through experience.

Organza, Acrylic Paint

18” x 60”

2024

Echo Systems is a series of layered organza works that explore how structure, memory, and perception operate across interconnected networks. Moving between neural pathways, mycorrhizal webs, and cosmic fields, the series traces the repetition of form across internal, terrestrial, and astronomical systems.

Constructed from translucent layers, each piece uses light as an active material. As illumination passes through the surface, shifting shadows extend the work beyond its physical boundaries, creating a secondary image that exists in space. This interplay between material and projection mirrors the behavior of the systems being referenced—expanding, overlapping, and existing across multiple dimensions simultaneously.

Rather than presenting fixed images, these works function as perceptual environments. Depth is not inherent, but constructed through movement, light, and position. What appears flat begins to unfold; what is contained begins to disperse. In this way, the viewer becomes essential to the work, activating it through their presence.

Each grouping—Neural Constellations, Mycorrhizal Webs, and Cosmic Fields—translates a different scale of network, yet all share a common visual language of branching, clustering, and dispersion. These parallels suggest that memory is not isolated within the mind, but exists as part of a larger, distributed system that spans body, environment, and cosmos.

As an early exploration of light, shadow, and layered perception, Echo Systems lays the foundation for Lugo’s later sculptural work—where reflection, refraction, and spatial interaction become tools for mapping memory and interconnected systems in physical space.

Acrylic

10” x 11” x 13”

2023

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

These bubble sculptures emerge from Lugo’s childhood memories of blowing bubbles in the park, fleeting forms that once felt monumental, just out of reach, suspended between play and impossibility. What was once a simple act becomes, in retrospect, an early encounter with scale, perception, and the illusion of permanence.

In this body of work, the bubble becomes both a personal and a cosmological structure. Drawing from the concept of “bubble universes” within the theory of eternal inflation, each form becomes a self-contained world, distinct yet intimately connected to the larger whole. These clustered volumes echo the logic found throughout Lugo’s practice: systems within systems, bodies within bodies, universes nested inside one another.

The soft, swollen geometry of the sculptures resists rigid structure, instead embracing a fluid, cellular language that mirrors both organic growth and cosmic expansion. Their surfaces hold subtle variations, evidence of time, touch, and process, reinforcing the tension between permanence and ephemerality that defines Lugo’s work.

At a human scale, these forms become a meditation on shared experience. Much like parallel universes, we occupy the same physical world while perceiving it through entirely different lenses. Each “bubble” suggests an individual reality shaped by memory, culture, and perspective, yet inseparable from the collective environment that holds it.

By grounding theoretical physics in embodied memory, Lugo creates a space where the intimate and the infinite collapse into one another, where a childhood gesture expands into a model for understanding the structure of existence itself.

Inaugural University Solo Show presented by Morgan Lugo

January 18, 2024 - March 6, 2024

Upstate Gallery

University of South Carolina Upstate Campus

Spartanburg, South Carolina

As Above, So Below explores the relationship between internal, terrestrial, and cosmic systems—tracing how information, memory, and structure operate across scales. The work moves between the microcosm of the human mind, the meso-scale networks of the natural world, and the macrocosm of the universe.

Across these realms—neural pathways, mycorrhizal networks, and astronomical formations—similar patterns emerge: branching, clustering, repetition, and collapse. These shared structures suggest that memory is not confined to the individual, but exists as part of a larger, interconnected system spanning body, environment, and cosmos.

Rather than isolating these layers, the exhibition emphasizes their continuity. The terrestrial realm acts as a bridge, linking the internal processes of the body to the expansive systems of the universe. In this way, the work positions the human not as separate from nature or the cosmos, but as embedded within an ongoing exchange of information and form.

Through material, scale, and spatial experience, Lugo invites viewers to move between these layers, shifting perception from intimate to expansive. As perspective changes, so does understanding: what feels internal begins to mirror the external, and what appears distant becomes deeply familiar.

As Above, So Below becomes a continuous loop—

a reflection across scales, where the micro, meso, and macro are not distinct, but inseparable expressions of the same underlying patterns.

Organza, Acrylic Paint

36” x 48”

2024

Echo Systems is a series of layered organza works that explore how structure, memory, and perception operate across interconnected networks. Moving between neural pathways, mycorrhizal webs, and cosmic fields, the series traces the repetition of form across internal, terrestrial, and astronomical systems.

Constructed from translucent layers, each piece uses light as an active material. As illumination passes through the surface, shifting shadows extend the work beyond its physical boundaries, creating a secondary image that exists in space. This interplay between material and projection mirrors the behavior of the systems being referenced—expanding, overlapping, and existing across multiple dimensions simultaneously.

Rather than presenting fixed images, these works function as perceptual environments. Depth is not inherent, but constructed through movement, light, and position. What appears flat begins to unfold; what is contained begins to disperse. In this way, the viewer becomes essential to the work, activating it through their presence.

Each grouping—Neural Constellations, Mycorrhizal Webs, and Cosmic Fields—translates a different scale of network, yet all share a common visual language of branching, clustering, and dispersion. These parallels suggest that memory is not isolated within the mind, but exists as part of a larger, distributed system that spans body, environment, and cosmos.

As an early exploration of light, shadow, and layered perception, Echo Systems lays the foundation for Lugo’s later sculptural work—where reflection, refraction, and spatial interaction become tools for mapping memory and interconnected systems in physical space.

Acrylic

16” x 11” x 13”

2023

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

These bubble sculptures emerge from Lugo’s childhood memories of blowing bubbles in the park, fleeting forms that once felt monumental, just out of reach, suspended between play and impossibility. What was once a simple act becomes, in retrospect, an early encounter with scale, perception, and the illusion of permanence.

In this body of work, the bubble becomes both a personal and a cosmological structure. Drawing from the concept of “bubble universes” within the theory of eternal inflation, each form becomes a self-contained world, distinct yet intimately connected to the larger whole. These clustered volumes echo the logic found throughout Lugo’s practice: systems within systems, bodies within bodies, universes nested inside one another.

The soft, swollen geometry of the sculptures resists rigid structure, instead embracing a fluid, cellular language that mirrors both organic growth and cosmic expansion. Their surfaces hold subtle variations, evidence of time, touch, and process, reinforcing the tension between permanence and ephemerality that defines Lugo’s work.

At a human scale, these forms become a meditation on shared experience. Much like parallel universes, we occupy the same physical world while perceiving it through entirely different lenses. Each “bubble” suggests an individual reality shaped by memory, culture, and perspective, yet inseparable from the collective environment that holds it.

By grounding theoretical physics in embodied memory, Lugo creates a space where the intimate and the infinite collapse into one another, where a childhood gesture expands into a model for understanding the structure of existence itself.

Inaugural Solo Show presented by Morgan Lugo

June 2 - July 9, 2022

Day and Night Gallery

Atlanta, Georgia

When the World Feels Weightless explores the structure and sensation of memory—how fleeting experiences become embedded, accumulated, and carried over time. Working primarily in bronze, Lugo uses permanence to hold what is inherently unstable, giving form to moments that would otherwise dissolve.

The work draws parallels between neural networks and astronomical systems, tracing visual and structural similarities between the brain’s pathways and constellations. Across these scales, memory appears not as a linear sequence, but as a constellation—fragmented, interconnected, and held together through resonance rather than chronology.

Referencing star lore across cultures, the work considers how stories are stored both biologically and collectively. Just as personal memory is encoded within neural structures, cultural memory is embedded in the arrangement and interpretation of the stars. These systems mirror one another, suggesting that memory extends beyond the individual into shared frameworks of meaning.

Each piece functions as a cluster—an accumulation of moments, sensations, and experiences held in relation to one another. Together, the works map how memory forms patterns within the mind, and how those patterns contribute to the broader cultural fabric of the communities we inhabit.

Rather than presenting memory as fixed, When the World Feels Weightless positions it as something fluid and generative—an evolving system where personal and collective narratives continuously overlap.

Organza, Acrylic Paint, LED Neon

84” x 54”

2024

Organza, Acrylic Paint

60” x 54”

2024

Echo Systems is a series of layered organza works that explore how structure, memory, and perception operate across interconnected networks. Moving between neural pathways, mycorrhizal webs, and cosmic fields, the series traces the repetition of form across internal, terrestrial, and astronomical systems.

Constructed from translucent layers, each piece uses light as an active material. As illumination passes through the surface, shifting shadows extend the work beyond its physical boundaries, creating a secondary image that exists in space. This interplay between material and projection mirrors the behavior of the systems being referenced—expanding, overlapping, and existing across multiple dimensions simultaneously.

Rather than presenting fixed images, these works function as perceptual environments. Depth is not inherent, but constructed through movement, light, and position. What appears flat begins to unfold; what is contained begins to disperse. In this way, the viewer becomes essential to the work, activating it through their presence.

Each grouping—Neural Constellations, Mycorrhizal Webs, and Cosmic Fields—translates a different scale of network, yet all share a common visual language of branching, clustering, and dispersion. These parallels suggest that memory is not isolated within the mind, but exists as part of a larger, distributed system that spans body, environment, and cosmos.

As an early exploration of light, shadow, and layered perception, Echo Systems lays the foundation for Lugo’s later sculptural work—where reflection, refraction, and spatial interaction become tools for mapping memory and interconnected systems in physical space.

Acrylic

16” x 11” x 13”

2023

Editions Available; E-mail with Inquiry 

These bubble sculptures emerge from Lugo’s childhood memories of blowing bubbles in the park, fleeting forms that once felt monumental, just out of reach, suspended between play and impossibility. What was once a simple act becomes, in retrospect, an early encounter with scale, perception, and the illusion of permanence.

In this body of work, the bubble becomes both a personal and a cosmological structure. Drawing from the concept of “bubble universes” within the theory of eternal inflation, each form becomes a self-contained world, distinct yet intimately connected to the larger whole. These clustered volumes echo the logic found throughout Lugo’s practice: systems within systems, bodies within bodies, universes nested inside one another.

The soft, swollen geometry of the sculptures resists rigid structure, instead embracing a fluid, cellular language that mirrors both organic growth and cosmic expansion. Their surfaces hold subtle variations, evidence of time, touch, and process, reinforcing the tension between permanence and ephemerality that defines Lugo’s work.

At a human scale, these forms become a meditation on shared experience. Much like parallel universes, we occupy the same physical world while perceiving it through entirely different lenses. Each “bubble” suggests an individual reality shaped by memory, culture, and perspective, yet inseparable from the collective environment that holds it.

By grounding theoretical physics in embodied memory, Lugo creates a space where the intimate and the infinite collapse into one another, where a childhood gesture expands into a model for understanding the structure of existence itself.

Organza, Acrylic Paint

48” x 48”

2024

Echo Systems is a series of layered organza works that explore how structure, memory, and perception operate across interconnected networks. Moving between neural pathways, mycorrhizal webs, and cosmic fields, the series traces the repetition of form across internal, terrestrial, and astronomical systems.

Constructed from translucent layers, each piece uses light as an active material. As illumination passes through the surface, shifting shadows extend the work beyond its physical boundaries, creating a secondary image that exists in space. This interplay between material and projection mirrors the behavior of the systems being referenced—expanding, overlapping, and existing across multiple dimensions simultaneously.

Rather than presenting fixed images, these works function as perceptual environments. Depth is not inherent, but constructed through movement, light, and position. What appears flat begins to unfold; what is contained begins to disperse. In this way, the viewer becomes essential to the work, activating it through their presence.

Each grouping—Neural Constellations, Mycorrhizal Webs, and Cosmic Fields—translates a different scale of network, yet all share a common visual language of branching, clustering, and dispersion. These parallels suggest that memory is not isolated within the mind, but exists as part of a larger, distributed system that spans body, environment, and cosmos.

As an early exploration of light, shadow, and layered perception, Echo Systems lays the foundation for Lugo’s later sculptural work—where reflection, refraction, and spatial interaction become tools for mapping memory and interconnected systems in physical space.

Bronze and Maple

7" x 7" x 15"

2016

Private Collector - Denver, Colorado

Example of private commissioned trophy available upon request; E-mail with inquiry.

This Trophy is for a fantasy football league called “The Boss Hogs”.

Bronze

5.5” x 3.5”

2018

Private Collector: San Diego, California (1st Edition)

E-mail with Inquiry on Editions.

This piece is a study on the human form and movement.

Repurposed Car Gears and Steel Rod

36” x 36” x 46”

2013

Private Collector - Atlanta, Georgia

Gear Chandelier marks my first experience with metal fabrication and serves as a foundational moment in my sculptural practice. Constructed from salvaged gears sourced from old Volkswagen buses and Chevrolets, the piece reflects an early interest in transformation—giving new life to materials that would otherwise be discarded.

The composition brings together mechanical components and circular forms, symbolizing the relationship between logic and creativity. The gears reference systems of reasoning and structure, while the surrounding circular elements evoke fluidity, imagination, and open-ended thought.

Rather than opposing forces, these elements operate in tandem, generating movement, energy, and illumination. The chandelier becomes a metaphor for the creative process itself—where structure and intuition intersect to produce new ideas. As a functional light source, the work also reinforces this concept physically, casting literal light as a result of this balance.

Jet windshields, Jet Engine Cords and Steel Rod

24” x 30” x 41”

2015

Donated to the Homer Fund Charity

Private collector - Brookhaven, Georgia

This functional sculpture was created for The Homer Fund, Home Depot’s charitable initiative supporting disaster relief and home rebuilding efforts. The piece was auctioned in the 2015 Homer Fund Auction, with proceeds contributing directly to rebuilding homes for families affected by natural disasters.

Constructed from salvaged jet engine components, the work explores transformation through material—repurposing industrial remnants into objects of renewed purpose. By merging function with sculpture, the piece reflects the same ethos as the charity itself: rebuilding, reimagining, and giving new life to what has been lost.

Creating this work was an especially meaningful experience, allowing me to apply my skills in a way that extended beyond the studio—transforming material into both a physical object and a direct source of support for others.

Jet Engine Cover, Jet Engine Cap, Steel Rod, Glass and Bronze Coated Mirror

30” x 30” x 36”

2015

Donated to the Homer Fund Charity

Private collector - Kennesaw, Georgia

This functional sculpture was created for The Homer Fund, Home Depot’s charitable initiative supporting disaster relief and home rebuilding efforts. The piece was auctioned in the 2015 Homer Fund Auction, with proceeds contributing directly to rebuilding homes for families affected by natural disasters.

Constructed from salvaged jet engine components, the work explores transformation through material—repurposing industrial remnants into objects of renewed purpose. By merging function with sculpture, the piece reflects the same ethos as the charity itself: rebuilding, reimagining, and giving new life to what has been lost.

Creating this work was an especially meaningful experience, allowing me to apply my skills in a way that extended beyond the studio—transforming material into both a physical object and a direct source of support for others.

Jet Door Covers, Wood, Wire and Steel

16” x 24” x 36” 

2015

Donated to The Homer Fund Charity

Private collector - Atlanta, Georgia

This functional sculpture was created for The Homer Fund, Home Depot’s charitable initiative supporting disaster relief and home rebuilding efforts. The piece was auctioned in the 2015 Homer Fund Auction, with proceeds contributing directly to rebuilding homes for families affected by natural disasters.

Constructed from salvaged jet engine components, the work explores transformation through material—repurposing industrial remnants into objects of renewed purpose. By merging function with sculpture, the piece reflects the same ethos as the charity itself: rebuilding, reimagining, and giving new life to what has been lost.

Creating this work was an especially meaningful experience, allowing me to apply my skills in a way that extended beyond the studio—transforming material into both a physical object and a direct source of support for others.

Bronze

15” x 5” x 1”

2015

Private Collector - Asheville, North Carolina

Made as part of my training in organic sand casting, metal polishing and patina work at the Hermann Noack Bronze Foundry in Berlin, Germany. The sculpture is inspired by my Grandmother's paintings. 

Bronze

8” x 8” x 10”

2015

Private collector - Buckhead, Georgia

Made as part of my training in investment casting, wax working, silicone mold making, metal chasing and patina work at the Hermann Noack Bronze Foundry in Berlin, Germany. The sculpture is inspired off of a recurring motifs in my work.

Ceramic

Various sizes

2013

Private collectors - Atlanta, Georgia and Boulder, Colorado

Ceramic

15” x 24” x 16”

2013

Private collector - Atlanta, Georgia

Sweet Dreams emerged from a recurring series of dreams in which I experienced my own death—night after night, for nearly a month. In each dream, I would die, yet the narrative would continue as if nothing had happened. What initially felt like an endless cycle of nightmares gradually shifted through research and reflection. I came to understand these visions not as endings, but as symbolic transitions—markers of transformation and rebirth within my waking life.

This piece embodies that duality.

From a distance, the sculpture appears soft, whimsical, and almost playful—its pastel surface and organic forms suggesting something gentle, even comforting. However, as the viewer moves closer, the work reveals a more unsettling interior: distorted anatomies, fragmented bodies, and moments of tension embedded within the form.

The piece asks the viewer to navigate this shift in perception—to recognize how beauty and discomfort, clarity and confusion, can coexist within the same experience. What first appears dreamlike and serene slowly unfolds into something more complex, mirroring the layered nature of the subconscious mind.

Rather than depicting a singular moment, Sweet Dreams captures a continuous state of transformation—where endings and beginnings collapse into one another.

Resin, Flowers, Bugs and Moss

24” x 26” x 32” 

2013

Private Collector - Atlanta, Georgia

Fossilized Feelings marks a moment of transformation—when heartbreak became a catalyst for growth rather than collapse. What began as pain, confusion, and self-doubt was consciously reshaped into something constructive: a new version of self emerging from the remnants of the old.

Using a deer skull and antlers—objects gifted to me by the very person who caused that pain—I re-contextualized them as symbols of renewal. Encased in an amber-like surface, these forms become preserved emotions, fragments of memory held in time like something both precious and distant.

Though the piece carries a visceral, almost unsettling presence, it is ultimately about regeneration. Each branching form suggests movement forward—growth that is not separate from pain, but built from it. Like a fossil, this moment remains embedded in who I am, not as something to dwell on, but as something that shaped me into who I am becoming.

Wood

60” x 48” x 48”

2014

Private collector - Athens, Georgia

This sculptural chair enlarges the human rib cage into an immersive, functional form. When seated, the viewer is physically enveloped by the ribs, creating the sensation of sitting inside the body rather than on an object.

The piece plays with scale and perception, turning an internal structure into an external experience. It invites awareness of the body’s own architecture—something typically unseen, yet essential—while blurring the line between protection and confinement.

Sculptural pottery and display

Ceramic

18” x 19” x 21”

2012

Private collector - Atlanta, Georgia

Sculpture that doubles as functinoal pottery

Hydrocal, Fabric, Terrarium, and Mink Skull

23” x 25” x 67”

2017

Private Collector -  Atlanta, Georgia

Donated to ARTitude Charity Auction and Gala - Atlanta, Georgia

Mother Nature explores the delicate tension between care and collapse—the quiet balance that sustains life, and the forces that constantly threaten to undo it. Draped fabric rises like shifting terrain, both soft and turbulent, echoing the unpredictable rhythms of the natural world.

At its peak, a hand reaches toward a suspended terrarium—a small, contained ecosystem hovering just out of reach. This gesture speaks to both nurturing and distance: our instinct to care for the environment, and the ways we remain disconnected from it.

The piece holds a duality—gentle yet unstable, protective yet precarious—suggesting that what sustains us is also deeply vulnerable. Beneath the surface of calm, something is always in motion.