Each of Frank Morbillo’s sculptures takes many hours—and hundreds of miles—to create. The Tesuque artist’s creative process begins far from his studio, on long hikes through the canyon lands of the American West. Over the past few months, Morbillo has sent us images and notes as one artwork takes shape. Watch as lines from nature find their way into his fabricated steel composition ‘Expanding…

“It was like being at sea,” said Adolph Gottlieb. The artist had just spent a year in the Desert Southwest- from 1937 to 1938- and returned to his hometown of New York City with a radically altered style. “There’s… a tremendous clarity of light and at night the clouds seem very close,” he continued.

This was a very different type of “sea” than the one that carried Gottlieb on his…