Molten Inspiration: Rafe Affleck’s Platinum Standard Project

Watershaping advanced by leaps and bounds from 1999 through 2004 – a journey of artistry and practicality that was an inspiration to witness. In this retrospective feature, WaterShapes Editor Eric Herman reviews 25 key projects published during that time frame, offering an ongoing resource to watershapers while defining a Platinum Standard for the designers, engineers, builders and artists who use water as their chosen medium.

Rafe Affleck
North Hollywood, Calif.

Artist Rafe Affleck not only uses water to accentuate and reflect his unique brand of stainless steel sculpture, but also works with cascades and sheeting flows of water to extend and visually complete the shapes and contours he defines. Indeed, through artful use of precise hydraulics and low-tolerance metalcraft, he so fully integrates water with steel in dazzling impressions that he blurs the distinctions between liquid and solid, static and kinetic, as the eye moves across graceful forms and geometries