Yukon Ho!

Some pix from my trip cross country :

Climbing boulders in the Mojave Desert, The Raven of the Gas Station in Arizon, The Truck, and hangin with Mikey the Wags in St. Louis (not exactly in that order)

It's a dog (eat dog world)

Isn't he adorable?

New work.

Smoke Break/ A Man About a Dog.

Welding for a Nimbler Generation: Sculptrobatics

I present to you a series of some of the most daring and difficult moves in competitive welding:

Our first maneuver is known as the One Handed Government Bend: The welder throws himself over the perilous spikes of his dragon sculpture, left leg splayed against the dragons head, right hand operating the trigger, left hand is placed cooly behind his back for added stylistic effect:

Our next maneuver is known as a Left Handed Quasimodo BuzzBox: here the welder squeezes himself into the tightest little ball, operating the trigger with his left hand and positioning the nozzle with his right:

This next Maneuver is known as Arc and Circumstance: a difficult contortion and balancing act, all the while concentrating on the sticky welding operation of Arc Welding (as opposed to the easier trigger based MIG) the left hand here is used as pivot and weld guide:

This maneuver is called the Brazen Recliner: A simple relaxed method thats more stylistic than practical:

And finally we have a great moment in welding history: The welder, aged 14 is seen here attempting the incredibly difficult Deep Freeze Splay Legged Chasm Extension.

The Dragon : Unleashed

Finally finished and installed; here is the first full shot of the Dragon:

More photos plus a movie coming soon. Also the owner of this dragon has started a naming competition amongst his friends and family... so I figured I'd extend the invitation to the general public. Any ideas what we should call it?

Joseph Merrick* The Elephant Man

I made this sculpture before I read the book because I was always fascinated by his grotesque features. Now having read his story it makes me realize how trivial my own personal problems are. We all have problems and to us they are going to be important no matter what, but some things help to really put perspective on it all. The elephant man was hideously deformed, well beyond the sculpture pictured above. For most of his life he was treated as a monster and spent many years locked in a room and displayed in sideshows as a circus freak. It wasn't until three years or so before his death that he finally had a place of his own (a renovated space in the back of a hospital). Despite his terrible deformities and his life of hardships he always displayed a very positive manner; he could not smile, yet he was perceivably happy for the little kindness he had seen.

Some love for the little guy.

New head on old shoulders.

I posted earlier about the anguish of Ugolino and how I made a sculpture based on him... however, as it turns out, I was unhappy with the pairing of his amalgamated-scrap body with the tediously rendered face. So I took his head off and put a different one on (if only life were that simple). For the moment Ugolino will simply be a bust; until I get around to sculpting a more detailed and fitting body, as well as a family to go along with him. But for now I present The Salvaged:

And now for something completely different

Until the new website is done (end of the month) I will be updating this blog with working shots and whatever else I can come up with (maybe even some old pieces that are yet to be unearthed from obscurity).

Inhale.

post-ponderance pondering what I should possibly ponder or (more probably) protracted procrastinations and meditations: Of pre-assemblage on my upcoming attempted proto-creation

Woah, wait, weird wordplay. My apologies for my frenetic chaotic and occasionally caustic case of contrived iambic clauses. It's a cause for much distress and discourse and I could probably teach a course, which would be (of course) about the crash course (from the most natural source) of the human sort, this discourse requires no retort or recourse or retweet (though I cringe at the cliche that that may one day be), about our adroit exploits wrought through blood sport as opined by yours truly: Me.

Again I cringe as there is still the contrived tinge of a voice which has been reared from earth singed with terse verse ( and the occasional drinking binge), as well as artistic visages that smile with self ascribed eminence who fail to bestow the worthwhile tenants to those 'neath their tutelage and only instill a voice which is resonant with their own scent of resentment (I wonder if it's clear here, just what I'm getting at), and I'm betting that most of them don't even know it yet.

I live lost in our meca-era. I say fuck Richard Serra, I prefer the wisdom of Caswell Berry and Steve Berra. Whats missing is mystery. If you don't know those people than you'll Google them quickly and, perchance, contort your face sickly (cause wisdom on wheels is like getting slipped a mickey). I wish (washily) to live amongst the reeds and plant seeds instead of subscribing to RSS feeds. To attend to needs that have escaped us (or simply scraped us) and have been tossed in the wind, like so many weeds; whose fate (to be doomed) has been deemed by the popular populace who thinks their thorns are obscene. This I scorn like the coming of morning, interrupting my dreams.

Again, once more, as before; I despise my own contrivances that I constantly find burning the surface of mine minds open mindedness (I'm constantly reminded of this). It makes me remiss; no, it makes me pissed, that I can talk like this, that I can balk and squawk like this, occasionally walk as such, with bravado that's motto is: Push come to shove. What happened to life and what happened to love. Where's my proverbial olive branch and turtle dove?

(Exhale.)

Octoberflash

So here's where I'm at.

New York has raised a big proverbial middle finger to the Fall season and welcomed Winter into our midst with wide open, down-parka'd, arms. As of yet I still keep my windows open some nights. I like to say it is the cold that makes me sleep better but I'm going to take a moment to revise that statement: It is not the cold that aids in my sleeping, rather it is having cold all around me and the act of huddling, cocoon-like, in my blankets; that warm, safe, protected from the elements around me feeling is what makes me sleep nicely ( much preferred over those muggy nights where I sleep splayed out on top of the covers like I was just dropped from some immense height onto my bed) . Now sleeping is nice, but waking up is the real pain in the ass these days. I don't want to leave warm den of blankets which I've encased myself in. Especially to do work outside in an unheated shop. But eventually I get up and get out of bed... and this month, I've decided, will be exceptionally taxing. My local social network is made up of the migrant workers I play soccer with and they all seem to hibernate when it's cold. All work and no play makes October a productive month. I've decided I'm going to bang out some serious work over the course of these next four weeks. I'm headed out west come November and I hope to be bringing along some of the most vicious and diabolical pieces to date (for a group show in LA), including a tricycle riding demon and an evil little girl amongst others. Also I'm working on a new website due to drop sometime this month. For now I'll unleash a little more dragon.

Cranberry Vanilla Trailmix Crunch and the Pursuit of Happiness

Well today was the Jewish day of Repentance: Yom Kippur. A fast day. No food from 6:30 the night before until 7:30 the night of. Not a tremendous feat but enough to make you really really hungry. I have an inimitable way of always breaking my fast with a ridiculously heavy food and eating it with great fervor, such that I am almost always struck woefully ill immediately following. Nonetheless, fasting in such a way truly makes me appreciate food; my tenacity towards eating, though tonight it is cut short due to self induced over-eager-indulgancy, will commence with renewed zeal tomorrow. Multiple bowls of my favorite Cranberry Vanilla Trailmix Crunch will be consumed. Fasting like this truly brings to light what a joy and a privilege eating actually is. A privilege we modernized humans take highly for granted. I may even go as far to say that the ease to which food is attainable is one of the single most principal reasons for the turmoil which exists within so many minds today. Depression, anxiety, lament, rage, so often directed towards the self or towards others... but why. Well a friend of mine (Michael O. Jones) recently posited that man's plight all started when we developed hands, a brilliant theory which I cannot properly expound upon; the theory I can expound upon is that of our overly accessible food supply. Just think if all day we, like most all other living creatures on this planet, spent our day seeking food. Seeking food that isn't easily attainable (and I don't mean to lessen the struggle of making money and actually buying food), if all day we hunted and gathered I don't think we would have as much time for petty human-condition type problems. All our emotions would be directed pretty much at the outcome of how our search for food panned out and success would be punctuated with glory and happiness.

Okay, I'm definitely over simplifying matters here. I can attest to the fact that my theory has it's share of holes in it, such as ignoring all the advancements in technology and human ingenuity. Granted. But it's all too often that we hear about people without joy in their lives, our friends, our family, and most frequently those glorified celebrities who are plied with drugs and alcohol and usually call it quits at an age much below average. So where's the joy? Where's the love at? What happened to people really appreciating shit? Like "Goddamn, this bowl of cereal tastes good, maybe I shouldn't take all these horse tranquilizers tonight..." It's hard to really take stock of what you have, instead of trying to find what you're missing. Sometimes it's nice to take a break from something that we all take entirely for granted. To take a step back and truly appreciate something. Just think of how great breathing must feel for the recently asphyxiated.

Ugolina, Sated.

Ugolina della Gherardesca. Mentioned in Canto's XXXII and XXXIII of Dante's Inferno, while alive he was trapped in a tower with his two sons and grandsons and starved to death and confronted with the pleas of his children to nourish himself with their bodies. As if his pain in life was not enough, Dante subjects him, in his poem, to infinite torture by encasing him in ice up to his neck, shoulder to shoulder with the man who locked him into his prison while he was alive.

(sculpture is slightly unfinished)

Infinite Dijestion

Well I just finished Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace) a couple days ago and I still don't feel like I've full recuperated. The book is so mammoth, simply in size, that I feel like I'm missing an actual physical entity now that it's over. I spent about two months lugging it's child sized girth around with me and I read it to the point where the back cover ended up being used as my bookmark, and now it sits, worn and ragged, on my bookshelf. The books physical presence, however, pales in comparison to the mental footprint it left. The book cultivated such an incredible world; each character, though all seemingly reflective of the author, was so painfully individual and human that I felt I knew them better than I know my own friends and family. Each character was so fraught with emotion and contradiction that, no matter how extreme, they were all likable.... Here I could choose to turn this into something of a book review or synopsis, but right now that seems highly unnecessary. This is not an attempt to persuade people to read Infinite Jest, it may even be the opposite, though I'm quite sure that it was the greatest book I've ever read (I think?). One of the principal ideas streaming through the book is that of Addiction, of dependency, and about coping with a loss of that addiction. The book, for me, had an addictive quality and I found myself unexcited about doing much anything besides laying in bed and reading (especially towards the end). Now I will not say anything of how the book ended, only that the ending left me feeling.... slack, empty...At a loss? It's hard to describe how I felt when the book ended, I wanted to cry and scream and curl up into a little ball and tear the book to pieces and then apologize to it and hold it tape it tenderly back together all in one split second. Now that the slackness of my jaw and the rawness of my being has subsided I'm left with a feeling much like pondering infinity. Something thats both incredibly natural and totally incomprehensible. All these feelings almost have a beauty to them that I would cherish if it weren't for the fact that the Author eventually took his own life or as he would have put it "De-mapped himself". Now I wonder if I can ever forgive him for consuming my mind so absolutely, to leave me poking at the void which his book left smoldering in it's wake, when in the end he himself couldn't stand workings of the very mind I've grown so fond of...

(something of sculpture in response is in the works)

Zac Max on Tucker Max: An Inconvenient Truth

Well, I know the man has a legion of detractors out there and I don't mean to be one of those nay-saying activists, I'm not. I actually think he's quite funny, though I often wish I didn't. When his so called non-fictional prose was posted on a website the guy was mostly-harmless (to use a phrase coined by Douglas Adams), even when it became a book it was no threat to our population. Bear with me on this one. When he was simply a blogger/writer and went around recounting his tales of drunken debauchery, his words only reached as far as those who sought them out. Not everyone loves reading enough to scroll through page after page of blog entry. Though of course he amassed quite a following, because, readerly or not, plenty of people got hooked on his crude humor and probably got sucked into living a little vicariously through him (especially those escaping their bookish lifestyle). Now I'm sure a mid-sized cross section of his followers went out to bars and clubs and tried to emulate (doubtful successfully) his douchbaggy demeanor and super-up-front-with-chicks mentality. And now he's releasing a movie about his exploits.

This is where things begin to spiral out of control a little. Using the in-you-face mass media quality of big screen could have detrimental effects on the, much loved, American bar-scene. Tucker max embodies this sort of ultra-asshole-proto-male. Now allowing proof, that his vulgar witticisms are successful in attracting the opposite sex, to seep out, will be enough to cause great ecological bar scene changes. Mimicry of Tucker's obvert assholishness will reach unprecedented levels. One specifically deplorable traits of Tucker's is his personal vendetta with those who are physically less fortunate. Now replace the scripted wit of Tucker Max with drunken mimicry and overblown boozed up egos and you have some seriously reprehensible behavior. Not to mention that the fervor for his up-comming movie will only be snowballed by the many protestors and activist who think he's simply a sleaze ball. Those people are just fueling the fire. His extremist nature is fed by people who hate him, otherwise who is he gonna say "blow me" to? Tucker Max's humor needs to be taken with more than just a grain of salt; it needs the whole biblical-turned-around-Lot sized pillar. If people don't see through him than we may just be melting the polar ice caps of douchbaggery, and that my friends is the Inconvenient Truth.

writing for writings sake.

What a strange species we are, us humans. We do such silly things like build really tall buildings and make cars that belch smoke and level mountains and clear forests. Oh to be human. We seem to be constantly digging away at the surface of our planet hoping to find something new that we can use for our own benefit, creating entire governments and societies around these non-replenishable resources that have been stumbled upon in a fortuitous windfall by a lucky few. Golly. I mean no wonder Lottery is so popular. Lottery in tandem with prayer is even more popular.

Maybe there is a set composition to every human. Within us there are certain criteria we need to fulfill in one way or another. We need something to do, to actively do, every one of us needs some sort of daily objective, even if the objects goal is to sit around and do nothing, thats the drive. Than we all have our various cravings, food, drink, sleep, sex, love, power, substance, whatever. Most of which we tend to in moderation, each one filling in a necessary node of our existence. But beyond fulfilling these things in moderation we need a single focal point. One of those things to be picked out of the hat ( insert here some sort of long winded nature vs nurture argument on how we derive our focus, as opposed to my more sweeping randomness theory) and really go at that one thing or combination of things. We need that central focus to drive us, even if that focus is the aforementioned nothingness; everyone must have something to push towards. I think we are all subject to our own ebbs and flows as well, that everyone pulses to some sort of rhythm, some more jarringly rapid than others. Some people pulsate every hour in some sort of strange rhythmic bipolarity and others may have seasonal swings and shifts some have both; all have something. No one is static.

I'm not sure what I'm getting at or, probably more correctly, if I want to use this blog as the sounding board for arriving wherever I may arrive...

Dragonizing.

I think as an aspiring artist it's ones job to kind of overproduce everything. Not to just shoot for par. Let people expect something moderately cool or interesting and then give them something that makes them do one of those double-takes or mouth-agape-with-awe faces. But I also have to strike a balance; to subsist off my art is to create within my means and still give people more than what they expected. Well I've recently been commissioned to sculpt a Dragon, maybe something like seven feet tall or so with a nice expansive wing-span and I'm being paid... well lets not discuss monetary issues, lets just say I've gone well beyond the call of duty (thats what I'm really trying to get at here). The sculpture is getting out of hand. I mean I can no longer lift even the head (pictured her in a stage much lighter than it's current, more fleshed out, manifestation), or rather I shouldn't lift the head and I did already much to the dismay of my shoulders which have this weird electric tingling sensations shooting through them. So now I have this giant dragon in my small shop and it's taking up all my work space, so I can't really work on other projects in the mean time and the body is so fuckin' heavy I can't move it around, the head needs two people to get it off the ground, I still have light fixtures to install (the eyes light up and it will project a red light out from it's mouth. Also I know nothing about wiring and electricity), I have spikes to adorn, two large wings to fabricate and on top of all that I'm going to have to cut it into pieces and re-assemble it on location. Oh boy.

more pictures coming soon.

T' each his own.

I've had my head filled by the words and thoughts of so many others. Specifically those who have been given the roll of packing it with information they deemed  Academically Necessary (regardless of whether I agreed with them or not). Who are these multiple ushers that have been loading me with their personalized brands of wisdoms? why Teachers of course. So I'm taking this time to bid them one last a'due and reflect back on my academic career.

Elementary school: An 11 year stint consisting of four hours of Jewish studies in the morning and four hours of standard all-american curriculum in the afternoon. A strange statistic that all the girls in my grade would turn out to become extremely orthodox and all the boys completely secular which really always makes me wonder what they were teaching those girls. 

One teacher of note: 

Rabbi Litt (Hebrew studies 4th - 8th grade) - a short, musically gifted violinist, with a terrible caffein addiction and occasionally off-the-handle stern policies.  The man would drink something like thirteen cups of Coffee a day and pace back and forth across the room, write something with a violent rapid motion on the board, go back to pacing and then scratch is his back, intensely, on the corner of a wall. Recess was awaited anxiously by pretty much everyone. 

Highschool: I was none too excited when I entered into the backwater clutches of Liberty High. I weighed in at maybe 90 pounds and stood about 4'9 upon inception. It took me a little while to adjust but eventually I would grow (I'm now 5'8 or so) to amass a large group of close friends and form what some might construe as meaningful  relationships with many of the teachers there

"Big" Ernie Feasel (10th grade history/government) - A very large, globe-like, individual with a heart warming laugh and welcoming smile and a very cynical, carefree manner. He enforced a strict Free-Speech policy in his class-room which made his class interesting, unsettling, argumentative and occasionally dangerous.

Ed Helbig ( 11th grade history)- More or less uninteresting in every respect.  I never paid much attention to the class or the homework but I generally made up for it with high test scores. At the end of the year I inexplicably had a 59 for my final term average and I was unable to contact him (he'd been fired) and he wouldn't return my calls. Finally I reached him mid summer using a different phone number only to have him call me a "Weasel" and that I "Brought the whole class down" and then he hung up the phone. Never really understood that one.

Mr. Trizinsky (11th and 12th grade english) - A veritable madman and my personal favorite. A big white bearded man who hobbled around the hallways with a suitcase in hand wearing big square glasses and some sort of woodland-patterned wool sweater. He would grade his students with grades like F++++++++, he would squirt the class with water and kick the garbage can relentlessly. His main mode of communication was non-verbal grunts and slow angry hand gestures. I always thought of him as large polar bear who somehow stumbled into an english classroom and wasn't quite sure what he was doing there. 

College: I don't recall learning that much in college, though I sure had a good time (see post below). There were a few teachers though, who I will not soon forget.

Carol Bankerd (design 1) - I don't think I understood one word this woman said. Most of it had to do with the "juxtaposition!" of "curvilinear!" and "orthogonal!" and every sentence was punctuated the words "Right Yes!". The women struck me as out of her mind and the class made me nauseous.. or maybe that was the night before.

John J. Rais (Master Class - Metal) - a visiting artist in his mid thirties who taught blacksmithing. John would go out to dinner with us after every almost every class and tell us stories of his delinquent teen years (fuckin' great stories). John remains a good friend and is one of the finest artists I know.

Phil Listengart (Bronze Casting, et al.) - No words could possibly do justice in describing how fantastic of a teacher Phil Listengart actually is. The man teems with knowledge, which he imbues passionately into the minds of his devoted students. I worked directly under Phil as one of his assistants and would regularly stay in the shop until three or four in the morning preparing molds and mold materials for his bronze casting class.  Anything phil said, goes.

There were many other teachers that I've had, who I've really liked, but they just weren't crazy enough to make the grade. To those I give an emphatic B+ just as they usually gave me.

 

more picks of sorry slick

No more teachers, though drastically more books.

So it is that time of year where summer is waning and everyone is ruminating about how quickly our north-eastern sector will dive into the depths of it's frigid winter. We all muse about how deplorable it is, but we all endure... somehow. This will be the first year whence my safety net is pulled out from beneath me. No more school. Period. Somehow I've never really felt the safety of that net though... I knew it was always technically there, but it never really felt all that net-like to me, I always felt I was pretty deep into the game (real-life) already. For me school was just one big football huddle before the actual action started (the summer being full contact). It was the comfort of camaraderie that made School worth while to me (not so really what I was being taught there), the vast social network that could easily be turned into a metaphor for that thing the Emperor Penguins do in the Antarctic where they slowly shift to the middle, taking turns bearing the brunt of the load (I'm not going to actually come up with the metaphor, but I know it's there somewhere). So this all seems like a big change, right? I'm 22 and say 20 of those years were spent with more than half of my time on loan to a cast of different characters* in various different academic establishments. And now, just ... not. 

I went back to Purchase today to sort out some ever-present financial issues and install a sculpture, that chapter of my life is officially closed. No more college . See normally, I'd be all frenzied to do what college kids tend to do when the new school year starts; celebrate with lots and lots of cheap beer; Whilst hungover I would vacantly attend my classes and as the hangover finally subsides I would squeeze in some generous video game playing just before it was time to start drinking again. Ah Purchase college. All the parties that are exactly the same, all the kids whose futures are in Williamsburg, all the strung out dancers and identity crisis-ing actors. I waved goodbye to all that today, and I realized: I got a lot of fuckin time on my hands now. Books! I can actually read again! And make some big sculptures without feeling like I'm neglecting certain social and alcohol related obligations! ... I mean shit, I don't even want to drink anymore.... Ya know, I'm really lookin forward to this coming fall.  (winter still sucks)

Z.

holy shit....

I just remember how fantastic sleeping is! 

*blog entry about the many interesting/excellent/crazy teachers whom i've had in my extensive school-life, coming soon.

Potential T-shirts (fun with photoshop)

So I'm due to make some new T-shirts and I have a bunch of ideas but nothing definite. Suggestions and comments are welcome, cause I really don't know what i'm gonna go with. 

I also don't know if some of these images can translate into a shirt (too many colors?)... anyway here's the first run of T-shirt ideas.

Sorry Slick

Enough of me rambling on about god knows what... how about a nice freshly finished sculpture. Weighing in at an easy 800-1000 pounds standing about 6'8 or so with a hand stretching up near 9 ft. His name tag reads Slick and he's in quite a lot of pain as he gets flattened by the cylinders of a Rolling Machine (used for putting curves in plates of steel and by no means to be messed with).  He cringes in front of the offices of Brakewell Steel only fifty or so feet away from the Dumpster Divers.  The sign reads "Office this way enter at your own RISK"

Insights on human dignity (internet marketing)

So I've had twitter for a little while now and I've come to regret the decision to walk down that road. I grow weary of it all. Even writing a blog and then sending out messages to let people know that I've written a blog and "hey, like, maybe you should go check it out" it all feels so forced. I mean what am I pushing here? I'm trying to sell my art and, it seems, to do that I have to sell myself.  Because regardless of who you are, it's very hard to sell art these days, whether your someone who has sold art for years or newly introduced to the art-world; it's tough. I don't think it really has to do with how smart or how great of an artist you are either... Now it's more about how well you can prostitute yourself on the internet or whether you know a really good pimp. That seems to be the fast-track to success. It used to be you were supposed to go from gallery to gallery and meet curators and get yourself into shows and then you'd might maybe strike it big. But now gallery's seem like empty vessels. Once full of life they are no longer the behemoths of the art world they once were. Now its all slick blogs and twitter followers and facebook fanbases. So to be a successful artist it seems one needs a degree in internet marketing. But I hate it. I just want to make sculpture for people who enjoy it. My mind is so full of sculptures I want to make, that I curse Time for the fact that it will prevent me from sculpting the limitless number of things I could conceivably create. But I can't just go out and sculpt all day without some sort of way of selling it. Not that I've ever sold anything through the internet anyway cause I'm no good at hyping myself up in the various places I would need to be hyped up in (word of mouth usually does it for me)....So why do I do this? Why do I continue to write entries on this blog and post links to it. Why do I succumb to these little social networks that feel inexplicably wrong and seem to feed on some sad primal urge to be heard at all times... Maybe it's because if I don't say anything I'm liable to explode and maybe I have the self indulgent artistic mind-set that wants other people to hear what I have to say, even if it is self-destructive. 

The Inescapable Need to Eat Your Vegetables

each word's a cacophony of unsung catastrophe 

thats pliable like taffy in the south american February 

hold strong on your haunches for cold wind blows resiliently 

and once aseptic hot-springs now house microbic artilleries  

it's a cyclical world which the truth points out pointedly 

so oil those hinges or you'll be walking disjointedly

the aspect of anger lives on chilly streets in Calgary 

as the termites chew holes in my cell wall refractory

now pass me that salad please

for leafy vegetables help with my allergies

This is me ranting and raving.

Whats going on with the world today. It rained like fifty fuckin days in a row this month. My summer has been soggy. I don't want a soggy summer,  I want overly hot beating sun that makes me appreciate the cold so badly that I only regret my wanting later.  But you know what, the grass is always greener. Let's get down on our hands and knees and inspect that grass why don't we?  Vibrant, greener, taller, shinier, seemingly glistening in the early morning dew and without fail on the other side of a freshly painted white picket fence. But do all these qualities make the grass better, is my wilting, somber, morose, dark green and occasionally brown, patched with dandelions and so called weeds... is it all that much worse. Or maybe we (and here I move into a sort of general 'we' conversational context) all just look at our own grass much more closely, we tend to idealized that greener grass. But have you ever stepped on that other grass, grass that seems to stand at attention, possibly in preparation to salute the all powerful spinning blades of it's Lord and Savior the Lawn Mower. Have you ever walked barefoot in it, crawled on your hands and knees and studied it? It's all sharp and jagged and feels something similar to a paper cut (I hate paper cuts) and you want to lie down in it but it scratches the back of your neck in a very uncomfortable way.  This green grass is not so great . It's all just a big chemical-y facade. I'm happier on this grass. But I've digressed from my non-linear rant and really I feel I should get back to it. 

The modern trend in Television... to watch people who are so miserable, so terrible, so awful, pathetic and shallow in every way that to watch their stupid melodramatic lives makes the viewer feel better about themselves. But to me that is oh so wrong.  Simply using these people as comparison is, in itself, a personal lowering... it's like take a portion of ones soul and placing it in the microwave.....  Movies these days... gimme a break, it's always the same seven clowns doing the same shtick in slightly altered context. Seth Rogan (et al.) and/or Will Ferral (et al.) add drug of choice, place in inherently stupid situation ( I.E. 70's era basketball, Mall cop, Ice skating, drug war, amatuer pornogrophay... you get the picture). Gimme something new something refreshing. And what the fuck kind of name for a James bond movie is Quantum of Solace it sounds like a biography about a lonely Physicist. 

More ranting later.

Get Conjunctivitis, I did!

Are you tired of groups of swarming people? Long hard work days? being hounded by colleagues and co-workers? Are you over stressed and under pressure and is everyone vying for your attention? Do you find people don't take you seriously anymore? Try new and improved Pink Eye! Thats right folks, Conjunctivitis! With this lovely little infection no one will want to be near you. You'll be pressed to take the day off from whatever job you have and you can easily excuse yourself from any hefty social obligations. Not to mention the unsettling nature of your new menacing red eye will make people not only listen to you but fear you in a similar way one might fear a rabid dog or an overly large spider.  But thats not all, you can also use the green gooey stuff that drips out of your eye at frequent intervals as a great adhesive for small household fixes! 

Pink Eye - All the cool kids are doing it!

Get yours today!

God I love being a sculptor (Part 2)

Metal is fun indeed, but she is an all consuming mistress. I can't even stress how stressed I am. Come to think of it I don't remember a time when I wasn't stressed.... nor do I remember a time when I wasn't working with metal (interesting...). Metal is pretty much all I know. Sure I can draw and clay model and make plaster molds (albeit poorly) but metal is no longer a material for me it's just a constant. Metal is pain and pleasure, it's work and it's distraction, it's freedom and confinement, Metal just is. Apart from maybe women and sports metal is pretty much all I think about (oh and food on occasion).

Maybe it's the artists temperament which keeps work constantly on my mind. Even when I try to relax or when something forces me to end my day early I am still constantly plagued by thoughts of what I could or should be doing. It's silly though, I know it is. I can't work all day, especially not in the metal industry.  This shit is heavy, I can't just pick up a sculpture and fix that little obtrusive weld on the underside. It's grunt work out there, but I'm a sucker for it. I am enraptured by the ultraviolet arc of a welding machine or the blue flame of a cutting torch,  even the smell of the air-born particles given off by a flap disc sanding wheel brings a smile to my face. 

Oh yeah, I've had injuries. I try my hardest to avoid 'em and  I've been pretty lucky, but I've had my share. I dug a deep trench into my thumb with a grinding machine,  I've cut half my knuckle off with a chipping hammer (more an act of stupidity than metalworking but I mention it regardless), I've burnt a line across my palm from a freshly forged piece of steel, I've had globs of liquid hot slag fall into my shoe creating quarter sized marks which turn red in the shower to this day, I've had incredible sun burn in the form of welders tan from the ultraviolet rays created by the arc hitting my exposed forearms, I've felt the feeling of sand being thrown in my eyes from catching one too many glimpses at aforemetioned arc... oh and lets not forget the numerous objects of clothing burnt to complete and utter worthlessness.  All the marks and burns and blackened cuts on the heat-weathered skin of my hands have become like a badge for me, similar to the way a wrestler might show off his deformed cauliflower-ear. And the funny thing is, I really can't even join in to those "hey check out this scar conversations".  My hands and arms don't actually scar. Sure at all times I have some raw pink flesh or a large scab but it usually blends in with the rest of my reasonably fresh cuts and bruises that I can't really place exactly where each one comes from and on the rare occasion I can place it, it usually means it was due to some act of overt stupidity that I'd rather not share. 

But when it comes down to it metal is sharp, heavy, hot, grueling, labor intensive, time consuming medium. Suffice to say I'm usually exhausted and hurting. 

And thats the easy part......

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 

New Video of the Dumpster Diver process

The show begins that saturday with an opening reception throughout the day and will be up through to the 12th.

My senior project consists of two different piece: Malevolution and The Distressing Process. The Distressing process consists of multiple distorted heads mounted on the wall and will be shown in the Visual Arts building at Purchase College. Malevolution consists of 7 Sculptures of Ascending height and will be on display in the middle of the purchase campus between the Library and the Student Services building.

Purchase college is located at :
735 Anderson Hill Rd.
Purchase, NY, 10577.

for more information contact me at zac@zacmax.com