God I love being a sculptor.

Many hours later the smell of burning rubber still lingers in my nostrils. I am constantly discovering new pocked burn marks along the length of my forearms. My fingertips have random criss cross patterns from where small cuts have filled with black metal dust and healed over. My knuckle bleeds from where a jagged edge of metal caught me off guard. There is paint drips all down my arm and deep trench from an over-tight welding shield. My hands tingle from the vibration of buffing the sculpture to nice polish with the wire brush wheel on my rickety grinding machine. My shoulders and neck are specked with burn marks from sparks that jumped over my shield and sat there till they burned little craters into my skin. I'm so tired I can't muster up the strength to take a shower and get all the foreign particles that caked to me with a thin layer of dried sweat off.... but man do I love it.

Just finished a new larger-than-life sized figure. 

Heres a quick sneak peak. (more pictures and a video coming soon) 

Rules were made to be excepted.

For every rule the necessary proof is usually stated as the exception. Without the exception, for some odd reason, the rule cannot be proven. Well I don't know if it worked that way in the oligarchies of yore, but today I think most people find themselves existing happily within these exceptions. I don't know if that makes sense entirely... but I feel that way somewhere deep down in the marrow of my bones, maybe in the same way my friend Rebeca (Becky the Knife) feels a twinge in her back whenever she has a thought thats all too clear. I think because so little is constant in this day and age and everything is so transient, that we find ourselves existing within these loopholes. My contradiction which I stated below, this in between area which I struggle within, which seemingly pinholes me down a very narrow street, happens to be one which I've made a comfortable little place for myself in. The breakdown as I wrote about it is not so plain and simple. There are more types of people than those with and those without. There exists those exception, those people who do understand. Who graduated Suma Cum Laude from the school of hard knocks and have grown to appreciate the grit and rawness of life for what it is. Those are the exceptions who prove my rule. 

I think that makes some sense... maybe. 

and now I'll post a picture of a sculpture....

Par for the Course

Sammy sits at home, alone up in the attic

All day he watches TV. Not the stations but the static

Terrance has a kitten whose name he has forgotten 

The cat is under-nourished, for he only feeds him cotton

Billy bought a sling shot, though why he isn’t sure 

So he calls it names and curses it, then throws it on the floor

Johnny lost his wallet, his keys and cell phone too

He can’t remember where they are or how he got into this room

Suzanne thinks it’s funny, to laugh at passersby 

From her home inside the subway grate the she crawled into as a child 

Katherine hasn’t lost her mind at least thats what she claims

she said it’s on vacation, off to see the river Thames

Donald’s tried for hours, just to tie his shoe

He gave it up quite recently and began painting himself blue

Sarah’s body trembles, so cold she’s nearly rigid

Still she leaves the thermostat on the setting labeled “Frigid”

Desmond eyes are crossed all day, though his visions fine

when questioned bout his actions he says “ would you rather I were blind?”

Cary picks up nuts and screws, carefully with gloves

Every evening at the park she feeds her findings to the doves

Brian lives in fear of ghosts, as well as spirits and of phantoms

He claims ones in his closet, holding his unborn child ransom

Kevin keeps us captivated, from the news he blindly reads

He says its streamed into his brain from martian data feeds

Roger has has a hernia, he convinced its just bad luck

But last week they caught him in the street where he tried lifting up a truck

Eric often runs outside, howling at the moon

Sometimes he thinks he’s a wolf, sometimes a baboon

These people do sound funny, some terrible or sad

but when it comes right down to it we’re all equally as mad

A Reinvigoration or A Recontradiction.

It has been ages since I have posted any of my personal musings and rants on a regular basis. However, I feel that the time is upon me to commence with my old ways and start ranting and raving as I had done so many years ago. I will henceforth post updates of works in progress, poetry, prose, short stories, topical essays, rants, raves, philosophical discourses, waxes, wanes, yarns, improper grammatical sentences and whatever else comes to mind.  To begin I will simply relate a short personal contradiction which I struggle with on daily basis:

The Sculpture I make is the embodiment of contradiction. My art career is one raging hypocrisy . I know its true; it kills me. I make work of a painful bent. Disfigured figures, demonic creatures with abysmal gaping maws,  the highly enraged, the highly distraught and most of all the madness of humanity (a recurring thesis of my work).  But what I represent is not the intangible high art of Delacroix or Monet. It is not something which a rich collector will presumptuously scratch his chin over, check his sterling silver pocket watch then errantly quip that he'll take two of each for his new mansion. Doesn't happen. It just aint me. I make work for the huddled masses, for the urban grit and pain of life. Art for me is expression and relief and a sounding board to scream out against what is inherently wrong with the world. But heres the catch. Because this shit takes me so long and saps the life out of me in the process and  rest is scarce because of how focused I must be to achieve my goals; I have to place the work at a price thats out of reach of those who I really want to own my work. Those who truly understand it are those who have been in the struggle, those who struggle and strive just as hard as I do and live to complain and bitch about it. The only people who can really afford what I make are usually people who cannot comprehend why I make it. But I cannot stop making it. And I cannot regress in my process and skill, No. Rather, I must strive to constantly move forward and better myself because my career has only just begun. Yet I further expand the gap of making artwork for those who can truly relate to it.... Oh how I am torn. 

-Zachary Max