Damien Hoar de Galvan carved a small sculpture from reclaimed wood every single day of 2024. By year's end, the Milton artist had 362 colorful assemblages crowding his home studio, just four short of the leap-year total after a trip to Barcelona interrupted his streak.
Now those pieces have landed him one of the Boston area's most prestigious art honors.
Hoar de Galvan received the 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize from ICA Boston, an award recognizing exceptional Boston-area artists that includes a solo exhibition at the museum. His show, titled "I don't think I'm ever gonna figure it out" after an Elliott Smith song, displayed all 362 sculptures atop five long shelves in the Fotene Demoulas Gallery from Aug. 28, 2025, through Jan. 19, 2026.
"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," Hoar de Galvan told This Is Colossal in an August 2026 profile.
He said he launched the daily project to shake up his process, working faster with new materials. He rarely sketches before starting a piece. Instead, he picks a shape or color that interests him and lets the sculpture dictate where it goes. Ideas would pop up mid-piece that he couldn't use that day, he said, so he'd try them later, creating what he called "invisible connections running through them all."
The materials carry family history. Some of the reclaimed wood comes from Hoar de Galvan's years as a preparator at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln. Other scraps date to his father's carpentry projects, begun in the 1970s after immigrating to Massachusetts from Argentina.
Hoar de Galvan, born in 1979 in Northampton, has worked with recycled wood for nearly 20 years. He holds a post-baccalaureate certificate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and is represented by Gallery Naga.
ICA assistant curator Tessa Bachi Haas organized the exhibition after requesting a studio visit, according to the ICA's exhibition page. It was that visit that prompted Hoar de Galvan to consider showing the full collection publicly for the first time. The Foster Prize, first established in 1999, has been awarded ten times.
A WBUR photo from December 2025 captured ICA director Nora Burnett Abrams standing in the gallery lined with his small sculptures.
Hoar de Galvan is now working toward upcoming exhibitions at Tokyo's Gallery Side2 and at Gallery Naga in Boston.
Upcoming community events:
- Milton fall youth basketball clinic registration is open.
- Canton Cable Advisory Committee meets Wednesday, Sept. 2, to discuss the Verizon license renewal.
- Milton Council on Aging board votes on its mission statement Monday, Sept. 14.
