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Interested in a beautiful waterfall? Or perhaps our award-winning landscape and swimming pool designs? Let's sit down in our comfortable design office and discuss your personal needs.
| Charlie cell: | (661) 472-9834 |
| Micah cell: | (661) 304-3625 |
Charlie Harwell - Lead design artist
Charlie Harwell is a highly respected landscape design artist. His attention to quality and beauty as a landscape contractor led him to building projects designed by the legendary Thomas Church in the California Bay Area. Charlie started building natural-rock waterfalls around the same time in the late 60's, but was always frustrated with the limitation of boulders.
After 25 years of landscape designing and contracting, Charlie decided to focus on design. In 1980 he moved to Bakersfield, California and formed Elite Landscape Design - a design firm that received numerous awards throughout the Calfornia's central valley. In 1989, law firm Borton, Petrini, and Conron approached Charlie to design the Bakersfield Business Conference, an event that grew from 5,000 to 14,500 attendees during the 6 years of Charlie's design and supervision.
Many of Harwell's landscape designs included waterfalls. Because quality waterfall builders were almost non-existant at the time, he decided to re-enter the waterfall business in 1997 under the name "Mirage Waterscapes and Rock Creations". Mirage focused on recreated rock waterfalls using GFRC panels and opened a world of possibility in shape and size. In 1999, differences with his then-partner led to a split in the company. Charlie kept the Mirage name and continued to build waterfalls for a couple of years with son Micah. In 2002, the two decided to form a partnership under the name "Masterpiece Waterfalls" - a business that would encompass the entire outdoor aesthetic, design and construction.
Charlie continues the duty of lead designer and operates as a site superintendent on exclusive projects.
Micah Harwell - Recreation artist
From an early age Micah Harwell always had an affinity toward computers and technology. Even in Junior High School, he saw the potential of using CAD to produce the plans his father was hand drawing. In 1988 Charlie made a large investment into a state-of-the-art computer system (a 386SX) with AutoCAD release 10. Micah started climbing the AutoCAD learning curve, and was soon producing CAD plans. But Micah had bigger plans of his own.
Micah started to develop a large collection of tree and shrub pictures that could be placed into a picture of a client's yard. The end result was the ability to show clients how a landscape would look finished, before breaking ground. It worked very well at the time, and there are quite a few companies that still use this technique. But that still wasn't enough for Micah.
3D was the next big thing, so Micah learned how to do 3D. He started constructing entire landscape projects in AutoCAD and producing pictures of them out of AutoShade, which later became the movie-effect software of choice, 3D Studio. Micah was able to produce a full-color walkthrough video from a set of plans.
In 1992, while still in High School, Micah formed the company "Industrial Techware" - a computer graphics service. He continued producing plans and walkthrough videos for his father. He also targeted building architects providing architectural renderings for numerous homes and buildings.
In 2000, Micah began building waterfalls on his father's construction crew. Almost immediately, he fell in love with the construction aspect of the trade. "Building a thing of beauty with your own hands - and then seeing happy customers is the greatest reward possible" says Micah.
Micah continues to push the envelope of construction techniques and technologies. In 2005, he spearheaded the fiberglass division of Masterpiece Waterfalls in an effort to make lightweight rock panels.
Currently, Micah manages the construction crew and produces design plans.