Studio Visit: Zach Storm

Zach Stor­m’s stu­dio is locat­ed in a tree-line neigh­bor­hood at the edge of Bal­ti­more City. It seems to be a peace­ful set­ting, full of detached sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes. Here, in a large shed (with no heat!) is where Zach keeps his stu­dio. Per­son­al­ly, I’m jeal­ous; his space has amaz­ing nat­ur­al light, airy, away from dis­trac­tion. It real­ly feels like a place to escape.

I first wrote about Zach’s work after I saw these paint­ings in a show at MICA. They are vibrant and glit­ter-full (Lit­er­al­ly. He used glit­ter spray paint in these works on paper.):

Look­ing at his work then (2012) to now (2013), I still see the same artist’s hand, but with his new series of works, they are more refined. Zach said he has a ten­den­cy to over­work things, and the paint­ings cur­rent­ly in his stu­dio are a result of the sys­tems of he’s cre­at­ed when work­ing. This guards against this incli­na­tion. The paint­ings are worked on simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and sequen­tial­ly in an order­ly fash­ion, and give Zach the free­dom to move from piece to piece if he’s frus­trat­ed or feel­ing stuck.

Cur­rent­ly, these paint­ings are on alu­minum, using auto­mo­tive primer, pig­ment and ure­thane. Despite my ini­tial assump­tion that Zach knew a lot about mate­ri­als, he said he did­n’t! The process of learn­ing and react­ing to the mate­r­i­al reac­tions with each oth­er is very much apart of these works. At times, he calls the reac­tion between mate­ri­als “unnerv­ing,” such as the way the pig­ment slides or resists primer, but ulti­mate­ly an impor­tant to the paint­ing’s development.

Before I vis­it­ed Zach’s stu­dio, I went through his past work on his web­site, writ­ing down words that I asso­ci­at­ed with his work. I described them using “ethe­re­al” and “splen­dor” — there’s sort of a whim­sy (dare I say) to be asso­ci­at­ed to those words, which is actu­al­ly what he tries to cap­ture in these paint­ings. He said he gets “excit­ed by light shin­ing through the trees,” and tries to repli­cat­ed emo­tion­al states like that.  This lead to an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion. Zach col­lects old ani­ma­tion cells, specif­i­cal­ly the back­grounds. Think of car­toons like Looney Toones or Ren and Stimpy. They have amaz­ing and beau­ti­ful­ly paint­ed back­grounds that col­or fields inspire him. There’s also a rhythm to ani­ma­tion, a rep­e­ti­tion and way of work­ing that is akin to Zach’s process, too. Not only that, but the act of paint­ing in a Bugs Bun­ny car­toon also makes Zach con­sid­er the way he works. Watch the first 10 sec­onds of this clip and you’ll understand:

As some­one study­ing illus­tra­tion, I loved that ref­er­ence. I would have nev­er thought of that when look­ing at his work, but it makes per­fect sense.

Zach has his first solo show, Solitare, open­ing soon at the Johannes Vogt Gallery in New York City. If you live in the area, head to his open­ing on Thurs­day, March 28, from 6PM — 8PM. More details on Facebook.

Some tools of the trade. Pig­ment, primer, inks.

Noth­ing is too pre­cious. You can always peel it off, sand it again, and start over!

Thanks, Zach!