“Lookout,” which has 90 openings of varying dimensions, is his first piece in brick. He claims that this is his most complicated sculpture to date. It uses a technique known as Nubian vaulting, developed thousands of years ago in the Upper Nile delta. Bricks can be laid at angles rather than just horizontally and the technique requires a fast-setting mortar. “You can create a span without having formwork,” Martin explains. “The bricks are supported by the previous course of bricks.”
“I love that it comes from Africa,” he said of the technique’s origins. In the 1960s, he worked in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone for two years, during which he learned local craft traditions from potters, weavers and woodcarvers. His stay there left a profound impression on him. “It was a moment when I was able to have firsthand experience of a part of the continent that…
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