MaryKate Maher<\/a> sculpture and collage are all in a day’s work. Her work exudes feeling and purpose, while retaining this museum-worthy quality. Her work utilizes natural and man-made objects like nothing we’ve ever seen before, it’s hard not to marvel at her work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Art Zealous had the chance to interview MaryKate about her work, her favorite things, and how she got her start.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n“Kindling”\u00a0photo courtesy of the artist<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n <\/p>\n
Art Zealous: What’s your favorite animal?<\/strong><\/p>\nMaryKate Maher:<\/strong> Mini pot-bellied pig, but I think my spirit animal is a sleepy cat.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ: Paper or plastic?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM:<\/strong> Paper.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0What is your phone background right now?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM:\u00a0<\/strong>Some generic setting with too many apps to cover anyway. Boring, I know. My screen also has bubbles in the protective layer and some type of studio gunk on it, so I can’t really see anything anyway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0What led you to the arts?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM:<\/strong> My parents. They would sign my sister and me up for weekend art classes when we were young. I got into painting and drawing pretty early on. A lot of puffy paint and bedazzling on canvases. My mom also worked in a public school that had an awesome art\/shop class. When my school would have days off, I would go to work with her and hang out in the art room for the day. I just kept going until I finally went to art school.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0What drove you or inspired you towards sculpting?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM:\u00a0<\/strong>I’ve always gravitated to textures and materiality. My background in painting slowly evolved into cutting out panels and making them free standing. I don’t consider myself strictly a sculptor. Collage is also a big part of my work as well. What connects the two\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>that strong sense of texture and materiality. I make work that is meant to be felt physically. I aim to make you feel something in your body and working in sculpture seems the most direct route to that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0What is your process like when sculpting? Do you go off the cuff, or plan out everything in rigorous detail?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM: <\/strong>It’s about 50\/50. I usually start by making sketches, planning out forms and certain details; however, when I start working in the round, I allow some intuition to take over. It can be a slow and deliberative process. Many times I will arrive at something like my original idea only to find it lacking. In this working\/reworking moment, other ideas emerge that I can then cannibalize into new works.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0You utilize a lot of natural minerals and resources in your work, what draws you to those resources?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM:\u00a0<\/strong>I take a lot of inspiration from the natural environment: geological formations, erosion, mineral deposits. I don’t necessarily use natural materials, but I do look at natural materials and then I look for ways to make the resulting works feel as if they have emerged\u00a0from\u00a0<\/em>the natural world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n“Auspicious Position”, courtesy of the artist<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0Which artists do you derive motivation from?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM:\u00a0<\/strong>Too many to name since there are a lot of artists making really great work right now. A handful of old and new are Joseph Beuys, Isamu Noguchi, Andra Ursata, Thomas Houseago, Arlene Shechet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ: Many of your pieces are of such unusual shapes and forms, like “Cavern.” How do you ultimately decide a shape is the way you want it to be?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM: <\/strong>The more awkward and strange the more correct it feels. This goes back to the earlier question about my process. A flat drawing of a form can feel completely different from the same form I sculpted. I usually find myself going back into a work and chopping chunks off, or squishing down a side to make it feel “right.” I also think my physical body is lopsided, so maybe it’s more about my inability to make something purposely symmetrical and I gravitate towards that unusual lump instead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0How do you find a balance between man-made materials and natural ones?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM:\u00a0<\/strong>Most of my natural materials and collections are in my house on display like random rocks and pieces of earth I collect from every place I visit. One piece is a seashell that attached itself to a little chunk of Styrofoam and they’re permanently fused together. That’s the sort of weird balance I try to find. My studio work attempts to evoke a familiarity with natural forms. Not in order to re-create it, like stage props, but rather to forge a symbiotic affinity with natural.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n“Subspace: reversed,” courtesy of the artist<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0How does tension come into play in your work?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM:\u00a0<\/strong>I find there are different moments of tension in the work. It elicits tension to approach something almost but not quite natural. Formally, I use weight and balance to create tension as well as texture, allowing really rough surfaces that look unfinished or ill-conceived to rub up against the more polished. A lot of it comes back to materiality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
AZ:\u00a0Finally, what’s your dream place to display your work?<\/strong><\/p>\nMM: <\/strong>The Palais de Tokyo<\/a> for an indoor setting, the Bonneville Salt Flats<\/a> for an outdoor setting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\ntop image\/\/ “ersetzen” Socrates Sculpture Park, 2010, images by Bilyana Dimitrova<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To stand out as an artist is a difficult task<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":29914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,24,23,11,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}