For many artists, designers, and writers, the daily project is a fruitful, if not invigorating, exercise. Whether it emerges in the form of a morning sketch or collection of objects gathered during walks, disciplined creativity has a certain allure, and many of us long for a regimen that pushes through blocks, demanding that we make even in the most uninspiring conditions.
This is true for Damien Hoar de Galvan, who embarked on a daily sculpture project at the beginning of 2024 from his home studio in Milton, just outside of Boston. He decided that, for the next 12 months, he would fashion a small wood assemblage each day. “I thought it would be a good way to change up how I was making things, new materials, work faster, etc.,” the artist writes, adding that he had been challenged by raising a teenage daughter during COVID and making and selling work through it all. The habit might bring the joy and play back into his process, and if one piece wasn’t his favorite, he could try again the next day.
At the beginning, Hoar de Galvan didn’t plan to exhibit the works but rather focused on leaning into his intuition and pushing himself in a new direction. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stick to the whole year and had no plan as to what to do with all the sculptures or how to show them all,” the artist says.
Rarely sketching a composition before gluing and painting scraps of reclaimed wood, he would begin by selecting a shape or color that interested him and progress from there. “There might be a feeling or impulse that pushes me in a general direction when starting a new one… I’m usually surprised along the way as they inevitably start dictating what they want to be,” he adds.
A trip to Barcelona waylaid the project for a few days, and at the end of 2024, Hoar de Galvan had amassed 362 sculptures, just four short of the leap year total. It wasn’t until ICA Boston curator Tessa Bachi Haas asked for a studio visit that Hoar de Galvan began to think about showing the works, and he later received the 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize, a biannual award that includes an exhibition at the museum.
Titled I don’t think I’m ever gonna figure it out after the Elliot Smith song, the complete collection appeared atop five long shelves. Presented together, the individual works appear diverse yet cohesive, featuring vibrant fragments of reclaimed wood fanned into pointed geometries, unusual comb-esque shapes fitted together like a puzzle, or radial lines that sweep outward like a starburst.
Standing just a few inches tall, each piece is a sort of record of a moment, while together, they capture a year of devotion and experimentation. “Thinking back to the sculpture a day, I made so many that sometimes an idea would pop up, and I knew there wasn’t time to change what I was working on for that day, but I would try it at some other point. There were some invisible connections running through them all,” Hoar de Galvan shares.
Currently, the artist is working toward exhibitions at Tokyo’s Gallery Side2 and Gallery Naga, where he’s represented. Keep up with his latest pieces on Instagram.
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