The street show

A couple more photos from the show.

Show it goes.

Okay, so I failed to take any really good photographs of the show... I know, I know, silly me. I was kinda busy just running around and.... stuff. So I'm putting out a request for anyone who was at the show and had a camera and happened to take any pictures to please send them to me! artbyzacmax@gmail.com

....

Otherwise the show was a wonderful success! I found it to be a much more enjoyable and refreshing experience than most shows which I have had in my life. Often times when I have a show there is an expectation and even a dependance on the show to be a monetary success. And when this is the case, there is a necessity for me to try and sell my work and a let down if no sales are made, and either way it's always anticlimactic. In this case it was far more enjoyable, the work which was being displayed was not for sale, and the people who came to pick up their sculptures were all excited and I had no expectations. It was an all around excellent experience. There certainly was no anti-climax, because as opposed to being something which is final and has a sense of something coming to an end (as shows often do) this felt more like a relaxing half-time break where I get to step out of my frenzied-secluded-work-mode, if only for a couple days, and indulge in some socializing.

I would have been right back into it, but I happened to get a little shard of metal in my eye a couple days before my show, and failing to remove the piece of metal caused a ring of rust to form on my eye. So the day after the show I went to the eye doctor who promptly cleaned the rust off my eye (I assure it has all been quite painless). The procedure left me with a patch on my eye for the rest of the day, so I was forced to take a by-day.. And so it'll have to suffice as my excuse for not having worked today as well....

But I must get back to the full swing of things, and added to my to-do-list is the epic task of sending out all these little sculptures to their proper locations around the globe... so, before I do, I figured I'd let them catch one more glimmer of attention, before they make the long journey to their new homes. I will be having an improvisational show somewhere(s) in the city this friday... It'll definitely be set up for a period of time in the Lower East Side and I may move it elsewhere at some point during the day.

More details soon.

6 days until the show ....

The show is less than a week away! So come by, October 16th, at Benji and Jakes in Bethel, NY. Doors open around 2 pm and I'll be there all day. Art. Beer. Pizza. Music. presumably in that order.

Can yoooooou dig it?

And now for something... a little different.

Zach Gross came by as part of the Eddie Adams workshop. He's got some sweet work on his website so I definitely recommend checkin it out.

When he left I decided instead of making something based off someones picture I would have a little fun and I made this little monster :

The whole is not always the sum of it's parts....

Joy.

Don't forget, my show is in 10 days [Woah!]. Hope to see you there!

This is Chris

Hey look, it's me!

A sneak preview!

Well I've missed my one a day posting a couple times this week, so heres something like 80 sculptures.

Now come to the show.

The show!!

First off, I'd like to apologize for my lack of updates over the last few days, I've been a bit under the weather so to make up for it, I will not miss one day of updating over the next two weeks.

This is steve. He used to work for the electric company.

On to the updates!

The show!

The show is getting close, two weeks away! And there is tons left to be done, a possible book (if there is enough interest to cover the production costs), maybe a T-shirt ( see previous parenthetical statement), an extremely large amount of stop motion footage to edit down (seriously it's a ridiculous amount of footage), postcards to send out and leave in high traffic areas, and of course like 30 (drastic underestimate) more sculptures to make.

So the show is open to anyone and everyone and it will take place at Benji and Jakes on Sunday October 16th (starts around 2pm and goes until around 10pm)

If you would like to have a postcard, ya know, just to have one, send an e-mail to artbyzacmax@gmail.com with your address in it.

Snake and Crane Martial Arts

I know I said I was gonna write something, but I just finished working and I have to go shop and cook for a big meal tonight.

l'Shana Tova!

[Happy New Year!]

Not all monsters all evil.

The sister of yesterday sculpture is here to prove that not every monster is an aberration of unspeakable horror.

Myah.

[I apologize for the small diptych photo]

I've missed a couple days this past week...

So here's a very angry child.

(fly swatter as requested)

A little (Metal) Bundle of Joy

Back to what I was saying about the difficulty of the small sculptures, well nothing could illustrate that point more clearly than trying to sculpt a newborn baby... With these tiny heads I've come to learn that most of the fabrication process is skill, but there is definitely an element of luck mixed in and when I was sculpting this little guy I certainly felt like... It's a sculpture that truly made me proud.

Crazy Bat Woman and the return of Big Ed

So I failed to upload one photo a day... not only did I fail to upload a sculpture to my blog, but I didn't even create a single one... well I'd have to say that's partly due to the fact that I drove down to westchester to pick up this massive beast of a sculpture who was still hanging around at Purchase College and has been longing to be driven down the thruway with his feet sticking out the back of my friends Ford F250 so that he could oxidize in the glorious country air.

A difficult task.

So Yesterday turned out to be one of the most difficult days of the project so far. I was tasked with making a set of twins... a set of very small twins (as well as their parents). I was given a photo of the family together, but it was requested that all 4 sculptures be separate. So I added the challenge of getting them all to fit together as in the original photo and also be separate pieces. This task proved to be a moderate pain (getting the arms to match up), but nothing compared to trying to make the two little girls. On top of the fact that a child's face has a somewhat different anatomical structure than an adult face, I also had to make two that looked very alike, and do it on a small scale. You see the thing with metal is, as you may have learned through life experience, it's not very malleable; it's unforgiving. So to make these two faces on this tiny scale and working with tools that are more or less designed to work on bridges and building structures... well, it's difficult. In fact at one point I threw my hat on the ground and walked off shaking with aggravation for at that point I had rebuilt the faces nearly 10 times each. There was one instance where I had successfully built the nose and eyes of one of the faces and was welding on the upper lip, when a slight miscalculation in my welding led to complete ruination of the face and I had to grind it all off and start over again. So even though it seems like the smaller the project the quicker and easier it would go, often it's just the opposite. For me the greatest challenge truly is the smallest work, and that is partly why I took on this project, to challenge myself, to get good at doing the hardest project I could think of so that it will easily translate itself to the larger, slower, more deliberate work... and I must say I'm looking very forward to the next massive sculpture. Whew.

Ah yes.

Oh man, today was exhausting. I'll explain why tomorrow.

Meet the Metalsmiths*

I missed out on posting yesterday, so I figured I'd do a little extra today. Enjoy three new sculptures!

*Their last name is not actually Metalsmith, but it would have been really cool if it were.

Update: just so everyone knows the show is a month away! October 16th, mark your calendars! Also, if we arent friends already, add me on facebook ( Zac Shavrick ) to get the official event invite.