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ARTIST INTERVIEW WITH GRAVITY-DEFYING SCULPTOR ZACHARY COFFIN

Zachary Coffin moves the heaviest part of the earth into the heavens. The Atlanta sculptor works with stone and metal to create kinetic large-scale pieces that bewilder and amuse.

Zach started making art as a photographer. He thought big from the beginning, using large format cameras when he wasn’t working as a photojournalist.

Massive works such as the The Universe Revolves Around YOU, Temple of Gravity, Colossus and one of his Rockspinners were built for Burning Man. Zach has also created monumental sculptures that delight adults and children in public spaces around the U.S. and in Switzerland.

For the Universe Revolves Around YOU, Zach took 80,000 pounds of granite and steel and through a feat of engineering created a magnificent work of art that moves us and is moved by us.

Zach is no Sisyphus. He has a lightness of being and he isn’t swayed by the logistics of moving massive amounts of material from mountain to playa or park.

The Ignite.me team had the opportunity to interview Zach to learn more about his artistic vision, his connection with the earth and his collaborative spirit.

A lot of artists work with natural materials, but you’ve chosen the most unwieldy objects that Mother Nature has to offer. You started out as a photographer, how did you move from two dimensional to such an extreme form of three-dimensional art?

Zach: I started in photography and did a lot of interesting work, but at some point, I saw no way to break new ground as an artist in the medium.  However, I do think my photography had a lot of effect on what I do now. In photography, everything must be interpreted through a machine. Unlike, say, painting, photography–traditional lens and chemical based– required that you process your vision through a series of precision instruments and complicated processes long before you can see the result, often days or weeks after capturing the image with the shutter. My experience in photography (both large format and years producing a huge volume of images for a daily newspaper) trained me to envision an end result and then achieve it through a series of technical steps, all without knowing the exact result until much later. This was good training. I have been working on one piece, Flock, for nearly three years now and have had to maintain a vision of the final piece throughout this process.

You’ve lived in places where rocks can’t always be trusted to hold their strength and earthquakes split the earth. What have you learned about the strength and the fragility of stone?

Zach: Given my penchant for hanging large rocks overhead, I generally stay away from the more fractured of stones. A hard rock is good to find. 

How do you choose your stone? Is it the form, the color or the feel, or is it something nebulous, like a feeling that you get when you see a certain large rock? Is there a certain kind of rock you use, like granite?

 Zach: I use granite exclusively; it is very strong and resists environmental stress, graffiti, etc, better than other rocks. The most important factor for me and large rocks is how can I move them. How close is the stone to the nearest machine that can pick it up and put it on a truck? How hard (expensive) is it to get. I am looking forward to the day when aesthetic concerns are the only thing that matter and I can pull a stone out via helicopter if I want. Once the uncompromising nature of logistics are considered then it becomes a question of what I am trying to accomplish with the rock. I have worked a lot with granite coming out of the stone quarries of Elberton, GA, for instance. This stone is very uniform and grey, so I approach it from a perspective of pure mass and utilize some of the largest stone cutting machines in the world to create the forms I am looking for. This was the source of the slabs of the Temple of Gravity and Universe Revolves. The stones for Colossus came from the Sierras, I spent many hours picking through fields of stone to find three rocks that were within a thousand lbs of each other (to keep the load balanced) and close enough to pluck out with a big machine.

I have done a series of Rockspinners, mounting a large rock on a bearing, making it into a surprisingly interactive object, these have come from all over. My favorite was when I got a commission to build two of them in Switzerland. We went to a quarry in the Italian part of the country where they were hacking huge rocks out of the side of the Alps, a beautiful mottled grey and white granite. As all the shapes were created by the random nature of dynamite blast, it took a lot of time to find two rocks that fit all of my geometric, aesthetic and interactive criteria. I had to flip them in my mind to get a feel of how they would look once done; my hours of staring at the image in a view camera ground glass –upside down and backwards–must have been good training for this.

People love rocks. We walk the beach, filling our pockets with smaller rocks. When we are walking around an urban area and come upon a rock garden or a stone sculpture, we are naturally drawn to it. Why do you think we are so attracted to rocks or stone?

Zach: Maybe people love rock because it reveals the hand of god. The rock we find (the hard metamorphic stone, specifically) cut and make into countertops and building facades, or the pebble we put into our pocket were all formed over unimaginable time and pressure before our species was even a species–often before even the existence of mammals.  Of all the materials I use, it is the one that is most indifferent to my actions. I can cut it, drill it, polish it, and so on, but nothing I do will alter its fundamental nature (well, you can apply extreme heat, but then you simply reduce it to smaller bits). Granite in particular has to cool slowly under great pressure to become granite. And when we are talking slowly, we are talking about millions of years for just the cooling part. This is what gives it so much complexity.

Of course, as an atheist, I don’t believe in the hand of god, but I do think we as such puny, short-lived creatures benefit from considering the time frame involved. I also really appreciate the unyielding nature of the material. Stone is so hard, yet so fragile, that working with it is really a negotiation, a delicate dance. I can and do regularly apply extreme force to stone. Whether lifting it with a crane or cutting into it with an 11′ diameter diamond saw powered by a 50HP electric motor, but these machines can fail rapidly and catastrophically if you aren’t paying attention to the stone itself, how you have set it up, how you have rigged it, how much resistance it will present to your diamond and what happens if a tool binds in a fracture etc. Quarries are littered with wrecked tools, many embedded in the rock in a way that can only be removed by destroying the tool.

It must be quite the engineering feat to get those giant stones off the ground and hang them in such a way that they are safe for people to play on and under. How do you plan a project like The Universe Revolves Around You or Temple of Gravity? Do you have an engineer who helps you with this?

Zach: I have worked with a series of brilliant engineers. Unfortunately they are brilliant and after the blush wears off, they go and find proper (paying) work. Because of this, I have taught myself Solidworks CAD design and the fundamentals of engineering and now do most of it myself. However, I am always looking for advice and talent to help with the engineering side.

You also work with metal, and you have the same ability to take something that would appear stagnant in lesser hands and encourage it to submit to the wind or other forces. Hydrogen is a great example of your skill. You must really be in tune with nature and science. Where do you get your inspiration for these pieces?

Zach: I am fundamentally a machine builder. Machines were the key to our species ability to take over the planet. They are both the reason and the only solution for the climate catastrophe that we are now facing. And it is clear that everything is about to change. So my goal as an artist has been to interpret and humanize the awesome forces we can control with our machines.

I have no idea where my inspiration comes from, I do know that the more pieces I build, the more ideas come. I have a backlog of works that I want to build that, if I could find the funding, could keep a shop of 3 or 4 people going full time for years. Most of my pieces come to me in a flash, then I go through a long process of building it over and over in my mind, and then over and over in CAD before actually fabricating the work. One thing about my work is that form tends to follow function, which is funny since sculpture really has no function in the classic utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, I usually start with a concept and allow that to dictate a form. For instance, my recent work, Universe Revolves Around You, which will be out on the playa again next year, is an exploration of just how much weight a group of people can be convinced to move, at the same time, what would it be like to stand in the middle and have your feet on the ground…with it all moving around you. It also is a reference to a concept in non-Newtonian physics. The universe is moving, all of it. To measure that movement, you have to pick a spot to measure from, and that spot will of course be yourself. So from a physics perspective, the universe is actually revolving around, well, you. I think I sorta have it right, a physicist would probably roll their eyes, but it is a fun concept to try to wrap your head around.

What’s it like being such a heavyweight in the art scene?

Zach: Gosh, I have been working to lose weight. It’s a shame I like beer so much.

The work you do has universal appeal, whether it’s at Burning Man or in an urban park. 

Zach: I feel that the contemporary art world lost its way when it demanded that a viewer know a lot about art to understand or even like an artwork. I reject this. I think that a good work of art can be so interesting that it might even cause someone to learn about art. The “catch more bees with honey” approach. Accordingly, I have spent my entire career trying to build work that is interesting and compelling to all humans, from a 4 year old who will never forget spinning a 9000lb stone, to the art history PhD who catches an oblique political joke within the title of a work, to the engineer who sees within my building style specific references to the great bridge builders of the industrial revolution.

I think it is arrogant to expect the audience to meet you on your terms. What the hell is wrong with being accessible and interesting? How does it in any way cheapen a work for it to be liked? I like people, I am interested in how people respond to new stimulus and want them to engage with my art. What I have found so interesting about the art on the playa is that you have thousands of curious energetic people who are out there for all kinds of reasons, they didn’t pay to get into a museum, they came out to go to Burning Man, so if they are enthusiastic about a piece of art — as opposed to all the other things to be excited about out there– then you know that excitement is very real. I think it is the greatest venue to see if what you are doing has value, if it has resonance.

What are you working on now? Can you tell us about Flock? It is so different from your other work, just as beautiful, but in a different way.

Zach: Flock is a culmination of multiple themes and techniques I have been working on for maybe two decades; let me see if I can break it down:

Broadly, my work falls into two categories. One is an interpretation of physics and engineering to the human scale, like a Rockspinner or the Temple of Gravity. These sculptures are as close to pure engineering as possible, stripped of ornament, and designed to give experience to a human as a kinetic physical being. The other is an exploration of zoomorphic visual themes. I am not sure why exactly, maybe because animal forms are so compelling and have universal appeal. Some of the first words we learn are of animals we might never see in the flesh. I have never seen a Giraffe or an Antelope, but know exactly what they are. I have built works that include abstractions of a herd of antelopes, a giant mythical bull and a huge spider.

I have a wonderful, patient client who commissioned Flock for a site on a rise in a vineyard in NapaValley. It is a site that will have few visitors though it will be visible from much of the property, so a wind powered work is most appropriate. Bird murmurations are a visually fascinating combination of regular forms with constantly changing non-patterns, so I began wondering if there was a way to interpret that with a sculpture moving in the wind. So, Flock is an attempt to model the murmuration of a flock of birds. What I realized in researching the piece, is that our eye/brain is able to recognize the shape of a bird from an astounding distance. A simple squiggle on a child’s drawing can be instantly interpreted as a bird as long as it is curved, symmetrical and in the sky.

I have done a few wind powered works.  As part of this process I have been exploring the nature of mobiles. Probably the most famous of the mobiles are those by Calder, who really opened up possibilities in his time. But if you look at Calder’s mobiles, you realize that they all work by hanging them from above, meaning that you didn’t have to be concerned with the unpredictable nature of a shifting CG (center of gravity). For example, is it easier to keep a coin vertical by drilling a hole and hanging it from a string, or balancing it on its edge on a table? And why do we find a coin standing on its edge more compelling than one hanging from a string? I think it is from the tension of knowing that it could topple at any moment, and we know this intuitively because we had to master this learning how to walk. As bipeds, our CG is precariously high above our feet and we are thus inherently unstable and have all kinds of mechanisms from visual clues to that funny bone in our ear to keep us upright. Watching my kids learn how to walk with their huge heads on top of these little feet made me appreciate how ridiculous the system is, but it works, it defines us and is the key to our ability to use tools and thus dominate the planet.

George Rickey started exploring works that placed the CG above the balance point, he was probably the first to combine a strong visual sense with the technical chops to build works that would last for the long haul outside. I have huge respect for both Calder and Rickey, but of course I am interested in exploring new territory and can stand on their shoulders to do so, plus have the advantage of the astounding advances in CAD and CNC machine technology. So Flock is actually a double compound pendulum at balance but with the CGs for the work above the pivot point, which makes the whole system difficult to balance and quite sensitive to things like flex in the structure.

Flock is easily the most technically complex work I have ever attempted. I have spent nearly three years in the design phase and am now actually building it. There are a couple of areas that I am exploring that come from the fabrication side and discoveries I have made while building other works.

One is the ability to use CAD design to model complex motion. It is easiest to build and balance kinetics with the axes of rotation square or parallel to each other. In the process of designing Flock, I explored changing the axis of rotation on multiple planes. Just a few degrees of change causes the visuals of the work to change dramatically while in motion. Of course it also makes it dramatically more difficult to build, but I think the result will be worth it.

Another area I am working with is the creation of complex volumetric forms by piecing together many thin sheet forms. I first started exploring this with a commission I built for a park in Atlanta, Horn Section. To build this work I needed a way to build three musical “horn” shapes without them being heavy or prohibitively expensive. With some help from some very talented CAD designers working in Rhino, we were able to break the complex curves down to triangles that I could have precision cut then weld together. The result was much stronger and lighter than I expected. This lead to the realization that I could attempt much larger and complex forms that could really catch the wind. One issue I came up against and struggled with for over a year is that it is nearly impossible to get a computer to generate the uniform but non-patterned forms that I am looking for in referencing a flock of birds. After exploring a lot of different options, I ended up building a very complex jig that I could force the bird forms into, position them by eye, then weld them together. I think it will be successful both visually and physically. I am hoping to have the work done this summer.

I heard that you were partly the inspiration for Feed the Artists Burn the Food. I can imagine you get very hungry doing such hard work. Can you tell us a bit about how that came to be? 

Zach: Col. Angus tracked me down in Atlanta and explained how much he loves the art at Burning Man, but by the time he would get there, the artists who built the work were nowhere to be found. Building a large project for the playa completely wipes you out, so most artists building a large project spend the event recovering which gives little time or energy to meet the people who come to enjoy the work. I explained to him that my biggest problem has consistently been feeding my crew on playa during the set up. So I suggested he meet the artists on big projects by gifting something they need, namely food during the build phase. To his credit, he tackled that problem with the focus of a laser beam and has since built a beloved program.

It has been an immense pleasure! Thank you, Zach.

The original article can be found here