Glove me tender.

Okay so I was blessed with a brief respite because "Zac" had a "shoulder injury". Oh the poor guy hurt himself doing one too many push-ups or something (like I give a shit, nobody cares about how I'm feeling) so he took a nice and easy couple days off (pussy). But today, he started up again, same deal: putting me on all types of hot pieces of metal and watching as my seams fray and my leather blackens (I think he gets some sort of sick pleasure out of this). At one point he took his hand out because it was burning inside... okay lets analyze this: if his hand is burning on the inside than imagine how it is for me on the outside. It's ridiculous! Look at me! Two days of work and I'm barely holding together. I don't know how much more of this I have in me.

Oh what a cruel destiny fate has chosen for me.

-G

Glove Hurts

Okay, let me make clear a change of tone from yesterday; that post was written by a glove who knew not what was coming. You see I was all excited, I thought "Hey! I'm getting out of this boring old store" and believe me I figured anything was better than hanging around on a wall all day and night, boy was I wrong.

I finished my first day working on the hands of this "Zac" person and I'm going to say right now, right off the bat, I don't like him. Don't get me wrong, he might make some real nice artwork... but he has no regard for his gloves (not just me either, there was veritable graveyard of incapacitated gloves lying around ). He treated me as if I have no feelings at all. Yesterday was my first day on the job, you'd think he'd go easy, gimme a pep talk or something. But no, he just starts welding away. And at first I'm like "hey this isn't so bad" I could see there being a Zen to this.... but then it just keeps going and going. And the heat! My goodness. I mean it ripped a hole in my chest simply from proximity! And thats another thing about this "Zac" fellow he constantly puts me directly on the hot steel! He doesn't even have the regard to dip his work in water or at least wait for it too cool down!! He just keeps it hot and just uses me as shield against the heat, can you believe that?! He just holds me in front of the hot weld flame, so the heat doesn't get to his ungloved right hand! I mean look at me; I'm coming apart at the seems and thats only after day one!

Maybe that was all just some cruel initiation and tomorrow will be an ice cream party...

.... I Hope.

-G

Glove stories.

Hello everybody I'm Zac's glove and I'm happy to say I'll be joining Zac both here on this blog as well as in the shop. So this is me just kinda signing in and saying hi and getting myself acquainted with blog format. I also just want to say that I'm real excited to be working with Zac on all of his exciting endeavors and doing whatever I can to help. I really don't know too much about metal work to be honest but I'm always up to learn new things!

Alright well, you'll be hearing regular updates from me soon.

-G

Mother Nature has a temper.

I think it's time we as human's take stock. That's right count all your ducks and set them in a row, because the earth, well, in my estimation, she aint' too happy these days. We've been on a tear for way too long, destroying and destroying and destroying our precious terra-firma. And surprise surprise, this entity thats billions of years older than us is starting get really fed up with these little mites on it's surface who keep trying their damnedest to chew up everything good she's got to offer. So maybe the volcano in Iceland wasn't the worst disaster of all time, maybe it's just a warning shot, a little wake up call or what have you. She's just letting us know, that the earths got weaponry that no nuclear bombs can fight, it's armed to the gills with some serious firepower, it's got fire, it's got ice, it's got lightning, it's got earthquakes, tidal waves, winds, you name it she can fuck you up with it. I mean we've all seen the day after tomorrow, despite being a pretty boring movie, it does depict some truly pressing and terrifying imagery (if you haven't, it's about what happens when the earth recedes into another ice age), and what it depicts is not pure fantasy, rather just a possible variant of what this world could lapse into if we don't treat it properly. So take stock.

New work

Another Dirge for another social network...

Twitter oh twitter

you're so very lame

the reason I use you

I just can't explain

Twitter oh twitter

it's all quite the same

your meeps and your tweets

are simply a pain

Twitter oh twitter

I just can't refrain

to post and to post

to bitch and complain

Twitter oh twitter

I constantly strain

to be heard by the world

but it all seems in vain

Twitter oh twitter

I try to maintain

the one-forty limit

but it's so hard to contain

Twitter oh twitter

I've boarded your train

but its only in hopes

of profit and gain

Twitter oh tiwitter

it seems your fates in the drain

and it was going so well

until the new ad campaign.

Twitter oh twitter

you'll soon fall like rain

go the way of the Dodo

and end up like Kurt Cobain

When I grow up I want to be an explosion.

I remember when I used to say... "When I grow up I'm gonna be an Artist" or astronaut or whatever. The point is I've come to the realization that there is no actual growing up. We are always who we are, just at different stages of saturation. I've always been an artist and I'd have to say that the purity with which I made art has only been tarnished by my years on this planet. My purest artistry came from wide eyed youth, the art of not knowing any better. I'm still just as much a kid today as I was in elementary school, only now I've soaked up a lot more superfluous knowledge and come up with all kinds of different strange conundrums and conflicting viewpoints about the relevance of my existence and my profession. I do not feel that youth is part and parcel to the ignorance it is often associated with, rather it is a sort of uncorrupted purity which in many ways supersedes intelligence.

Maybe I'm just too corrupted to get my point across without drudging up a condescending psuedo-sophisticant side of myself that only exists in these heavy pontifications and is comprised of words like "psuedo-" and "pontifications" and "comprised"

oh well.

What a handsome young man, and did you see what a cool T-shirt he was wearing?

T-shirts available now. Limited stock per size.

17 per shirt (20 if I don't have change).

Available at SUNY Purchase's Culture Shock festival this coming weekend

Contact me if your interested: zac@zacmax.com

Facebook oh facebook.

Facebook oh facebook your sweeping the nation,

from people complaining to proud remonstrations.

facebook oh facebook your deceiving the nation,

my fan page has a wall, but no insulation.

facebook oh facebook your eating the nation,

as well as the soul of my so called generation.

facebook oh facebook your leaving the nation,

my attention spans short, so I'm changing the station.

shirt-change.

Ok I know I said I was gonna do the oversized print with lots of crazy images... but i turns out the guy who I'm using for my printing can't go that big with the design, so to start off I'm going with 50 of the shirt above.

They will be available this coming thursday and I'll have a bunch for sale at Culture Shock taking place at Suny Purchase. Get at me if you want one.

God bless america... quickly.

Let me start by saying that I don't have television. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy sitting down and watching T.V., only that I've made a conscious decision not to have T.V. because I know how quickly and easily it can suck you in and sap your productivity; also I have a very short attention span and I can't deal with commercials (or most of the programming for that matter). Now don't get me wrong, I'm not some adamant anti-television type, in fact television can be access to a world of highly informative and entertaining..... sorry.. I'm having a little trouble writing this at the moment because I'm currently watching Mythbusters (at someone else's house)... what was I saying? Oh right T.V. can be great, its got a lot to offer, such as shows like Mythbusters and that latest installment to the planet earth series, Life... but as a whole its so riddled with contradictions that its hard to bear, yet no one seems to notice.

I mean lets simply start with Mythbusters, now its not purporting to be a specifically wholesome show, but it is indeed educational, except now they've added a secondary team which is comprised of fairly characterless characters, one of whom is the standard attractive girl, all of whom are obsessed with blowing stuff up and inane use of powerful weaponry. Alright thats not too much of a strike against the show, I like beautiful women as much as the next guy and explosions are indeed cool. So maybe thats a bad example. How about Ax Men or Ice Road Truckers or Deadliest Catch (and I'm just picking on discovery at the moment)... I mean the shows are about average Americans with tough jobs who are doing some real crazy stuff; fulfilling a need, no shame in that... But these shows are about deforestation, raping the ocean, and putting in pipelines to harvest the fossil fuels which we are so quickly and frivolously depleting. There are two sides to every coin; shows about the interesting lives of people who are simple doing a job that needs to be done are also depicting whats wrong with the way we treat the earth... and these are the good shows. These are the shows I watch if I'm at a television, shows that, despite the hypocrisy I'm claiming to see so blatantly, I still enjoy.

The real problem is that Television is more than just a simple thing: it's a mass media. It generates a thought process thats filtered through multiple millions of people, and so much of what is filtered through is pure garbage, not just that little bit of hypocrisy with some human interest attached. Half of television is commercials, commercials for McDonalds and Taco Bell, commercials for prescription drugs to keep you alive and addicted, commercials for insurance, commercials for useless products, propaganda, whatever. Allowing these things to resonate in our skulls is like signing up for mind control. I don't have T.V. and yet I still know the phone number for Nation Wide Warehouse; I feel like I've lost some sort of battle against an enemy I didn't even know existed.

And don't get me started on Reality T.V.

T-shirt results!

So it looks like number 7 is the most popular followed by numbers 4, 8, and 10.

So here's what I'm going to do: Since I'm not exactly swimming in the dinero at the moment I'm going to start with a limited run of number seven. 50 shirts total, all different sizes, 40 of them will be the standard black on white and ten of them will be red on black (and of course a green one for myself).

The white shirts are 17$ the black ones are 18$ and shipping is extra.

Get em while you can. Shirts arrive in a couple weeks.

This is the finished, tweaked and signed version.

The interim...

People really just don't appreciate negative space anymore

-Michael Owen Jones

So since I've returned from California I've been kind of bored. I'm working on house renovations and doing this T-shirt thing... but neither of those things seems to be all that consuming. In fact the T-shirt thing I just came up with because I needed something to do and maybe I could raise some money (though a limited run of a couple T-shirts is about as far from a get rich quick scheme as it gets). The weather is still sporadically shitty and I'm still fairly cooped up in my rural locale; a cause for much turmoil. Add to that the highly limited social life of being in a place where very few college educated 20 somethings want to be. Of course things will pick up as the soggy countryside dries out; like when I start playing soccer with the Spanish speaking chicken and duck farmers; and when I finally get back to work! But at the moment it's still just me aimlessly perusing social medias... editing things on photoshop... occasionally going on a run... watching old movies... trying to get through War and Peace.... and not much else. It's pretty rough.

As a metal sculptor the work season is fairly grueling. The work isn't easy, it's demanding, it's unhealthy, and most of all it's all consuming. I haven't really made anything in like two months and it's really getting under my skin. Of course once the intense metal work begins I generally look forward to a nice long respite period that comes with finishing some sculpture or another. The human condition is a bitch. But in actuality I'm happiest when I have burn marks all up my arms, when my fingers are all calloused and raw, when my face is smeared with dirt and my forehead has the impression left by the overtightened welding shield. And sure I complain and I moan about how tough and how much work I have to do, but it's only natural (everyones a martyr right).

I think the real judge of (artistic) character is not how well one maintains when the work is flowing in and things are busy, but how resolutely they deal with the interim periods, the negative space.

TRL (t-shirt request live) and my take on Hazel Dooney

As per usual: forgive my stupid entry-naming-tendency.

So Recently I've been reading the blog of Hazel Dooney ( hazeldooney.blogspot.com ) and I must say, it's quite interesting. The woman is a psuedo-celbrity-artist with an often embittered take on the overall mechanics behind the art world. Reading her blog has been kind of similar to watching those variably happy and depressing movies about famous artists which I love so much, except with an extra focus on economics. As for her artwork, for the most part, I'm not particularly excited (though there are some of her sketches which I do enjoy thoroughly), however I am also of the philosophy that my personal opinion has the same resonance as the buzzing of a fly . In any case her artwork is not the issue, it's what she has to say and how well she says it, that really got me thinking.

What really impresses me about this Hazel character is that she has no qualms about saying anything and everything and putting it out the world (not to mention she does it oh so elegantly) . Maybe it has to do with having reached a certain level of fame where people tend to hang more thoroughly on every-word you say, but whatever the reason may be, this ability is quite impressive to me. There is an unbearable amount of information circulating within the reach of our fingertips and to give unfettered accounts of ones personal thought process, placing it tangibly in the ether, is well... it's scary. I know I can't really do it.

There is much more I could say about all this but Brevity is the word of the moment.

Hazel I tip my hat to you.

Anyway, a couple people have asked for redesigned shirts and though I didn't follow every suggestion to the letter I did mess around a bit and I decided that these two additions were worth posting :

lets call it 13.

and 14.

The T-shirt Designs (part 2)

So the following post is a semi-comprehensive list of the T-shirt ideas and designs I plan on working with. What I need to do now is narrow down the playing field and decide between three designs which I want to further pursue. I will be printing three shirts.... at what quantity I'm not sure... two of them will definitely be black and white and I may consider doing the third one in color. But first I have to decide on the designs. So to help decide which shirts I will print I'm asking anyone who sees this to vote on which design(s) you like the best.

Hooray for Democracy!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

The first run of real T-shirt Designs

A few more roughed out t-shirt ideas.

more to come soon.

Zac Shavrick sings the hits.

Not really.

But I've decided to make a post about some phenomenal things which have come out of the movie and music industry, which may not be entirely recognized (well maybe some are and some aren't). I rarely spend much time putting down my thoughts on pop culture or music or movies, though in reality they are as ever present in my life as they are in everyone else's (I just have trouble admitting it).

First on my list is Andrew Bird. Though he is in no way obscure and is selling out concert halls world wide, I still place him at the top of my list. Mr. Bird is an anomaly in our generation of one sided and narrowly focused musicians. On top of a melodious voice, incredible whistling ability, virtuosic violin playing, not to mention adept handling of 5 or 6 other instruments he's also an inspiring song writer. Watching him perform live is like watching a great painter tackle a blank canvas, he plays a part of the song, loops it, then plays the next part on a different instrument; allowing you to watch him layer and create each of his compositions.

Next I will have to mention Paolo Nutini, the 20 year old scottish singer. Now he may not be as well rounded as Mr. Bird, but he packs quite a voice, in fact it's disturbingly good. Though not all his songs are amazing (and I will attribute that to age) the song Coming Up Easy is both lyrically beautifully and a showcase of this young mans talent.

As for the Movie industry, well I haven't had a chance to go out and see too many movies, but The Coen Brothers': A Serious Man quickly lodged itself high in my top 10 all time movies list.

I've lately been watching those movies about famous dead artists, and I must say; they are some of the most fascinating, intense and usually depressing movies you will ever see. It definitely worries me that the movies based on the careers of every great artists are so dower, but they are all similarly imbued with a spark of life that they cant be overlooked. I would have to say my favorites are: Rembrandt, The Horses Mouth (fictional), Lust for Life (Van Gogh) and Moulan Rouge (Toulouse lautrec).

Oh and Akira Kurisawa films, I can watch those all day (my favorite being RAN)!

...

I guess that wasn't very Pop, but it was fairly cultural.

go watch Paolo Nutini : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIQ2Rxh1k9Y

first attempt: simple t-shirt idea

white on black or black on white....

New T-Shirts.

So the first string of new ways in which I plan on raising a little capital is to do another run of T-shirts. I'm going to do three new designs using black on white/white on black. I haven't finalized any designs, but they are in the works at the moment. The real question now is how many do I print. So I figured I will simply take as many advance orders as possible and then base the final order on that.

The shirts will be all be 20 dollars with free shipping or 17 dollars if you buy it direct. I will be doing standard T-shirts and girls T's (and maybe a third thing).

If you have any desire for a shirt, or even think you might have a desire, just post a yes or a maybe in response to this blog.... or let me know in person, or by e-mail ( zac@zacmax.com ), or on facebook.

A strange twittering sensation (occasionally associated with Carpel Tunnel Syndrome)

Well I've always had a pragmatic view when it comes to new online trends, and twitter is no exception. I started out very apprehensive, actually to be honest I hated the idea (I still don't consider myself a huge proponent of the thing). After a while though its popularity and it's potential seemed something worth exploring. The fact that everything is searchable, it boosts google hits and opens you up to another extensively large social network.. well it seemed like something any sensible business minded artist should look into. And look into it I did. I mostly just followed the 15 or 20 people i knew on twitter and then a host of interesting artists and celebrities. It wasn't an earthshaking experience by any means. I would occasionally post a comment to this person or that one but usually I just mentioned my blog posts and well... not much else. Anyway my social networking popularity far from snowballed out of control (which was the greatest immediate permutation of a new social networking experience); maybe I am just not an adept social-networker, maybe I just don't have the dedication to the media thats needed for true transcendental twittering. Whatever the case, I didn't really give a shit (to put it plainly). The whole Twitter thing was kind of a backburner issue. I decided since it was a a moot enough point that anything seemed fair game, so i found found a batch-following applications and had myself a ball adding upwards of 500 people at a time (specifically those who seemed interested in art). Now here I was going about my business, happily friending 500 people in 20 minute intervals, waiting a couple days and then unfriending whoever didn't follow me, when all of a sudden my account gets removed. It turns out the higher ups at twitter got wind and decided to put the digital foot down. Apparently my actions were not entirely kosher. Oops. So the twitter-authorities (twitter-police?) suspended my account for the last month or so. I wrote them a nice long apologies, but they still made me wait a month. I guess now they feel that I've had sufficient time to repent, that I have come to alms with my seedy past, I am now fit to tweet again.