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Concrete Mystique Engraving
Custom artwork engraved and stained into a concrete floor by Concrete Mystique
2006
Under Rick Lobdell since
About

A painter took over a concrete company.

Rick Lobdell studied fine art and philosophy at Mount Union College, then took a masters in painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He moved to Nashville in 2003, was introduced to decorative concrete, and within three years had taken over Concrete Mystique Engraving and started treating the slab the way he had been trained to treat a canvas.

That is still how the company runs. Every job is drawn before it is cut, coloured by hand rather than picked from a chart, and finished by a crew that has been doing only this for two decades. It is the reason the work has collected sixteen national awards from the Decorative Concrete Council, twelve local awards in Greater Nashville, and invitations to demonstrate at World of Concrete.

We work out of Antioch and cover Nashville and Middle Tennessee: engraving, staining, metallic epoxy, overlays, pool decks, patios and driveways. We also pour our own concrete, because the surface underneath decides what the finish on top of it can do.

A sunburst design engraved into a concrete floor in Nashville
Koi fish stained and engraved into a residential concrete floor
A geometric sunburst engraved across a concrete patio
Years in Middle Tennessee

20+

National awards

16

Local awards

12

Cities served

12

How we work

Three things we will not cut corners on.

An artist draws it before a saw touches it

Rick Lobdell took a BA in fine art and philosophy and an MFA in painting before he ever picked up a grinder. Every design starts as a drawing, scaled to your slab and to the way the space is actually used, which is why the work does not look like a catalogue pattern dropped onto concrete.

We pour our own concrete

We run a concrete pouring crew in house rather than subcontracting it out. That matters because the surface underneath decides what the finish can do. When we control the pour, we know the slab is right before any design goes onto it, and there is nobody to point at if it is not.

We look at the site before we price it

We do not quote decorative concrete over the phone, and we will not pretend otherwise. The condition of your existing concrete changes the price and the method more than the square footage does. The visit is free, takes about an hour, and you get a straight answer about what the slab will and will not take.

A leaf design engraved and stained into decorative concrete by Concrete Mystique
The studio

The person who draws it is the person who owns it.

Rick runs the design on every job and comes out for the estimate himself, alongside a crew that has been cutting and colouring concrete in Middle Tennessee for two decades.

Rick Lobdell

Owner and lead designerMFA

Rick took a BA in fine art and philosophy at Mount Union College and an MFA in painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design, then moved to Nashville in 2003 and found decorative concrete. Within three years he had taken over Concrete Mystique Engraving and started treating the slab as a canvas. He has demonstrated at World of Concrete Artistry in Concrete, appeared on Tennessee Crossroads and The Concrete Show, and been published in national trade magazines. He also runs Gallery Mystique, a concrete furniture company.

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