artist’s Statement
My artistic practice is informed by two seemingly opposed loves, the natural world, and the machine world. I feel at home in nature, wilderness, the vast open areas beyond our cities. And I feel just as comfortable watching motorcycles at a racetrack, disassembling a mechanism, or working with a machine tool. This seems normal and balanced to me.
In both worlds I observe, contemplate, engage with, and disassemble. In both worlds I wonder about function, examine details, and imagine. In both worlds I read extensively about the advancements in our understanding of how these worlds function.
My artistic practice is about balancing, combining, and integrating these two worlds. Sometimes I make a machine that has a personality, or beingness to it. Other times I make a plant with machine-like function and appearance. In my own way, I want these two worlds to coexist, to cooperate, to become one.
The breakout moment for my artistic practice was the invention of the One Kernel Popcorn Popper. A silly little devise that pops only one kernel of popcorn at a time. For me it was a reason to invent new mechanisms to open and close the popping chamber and to explore new forms for the devise.
My aesthetic has developed around a machine language, referencing auto and motorcycle race machines, construction machines, and aircraft. This visual vocabulary is often applied towards forms I find in nature, leading me to the agave crane series and the Willow Oak kinetic sculpture of this last year.
Currently, I have three new bodies of sculptures underway. One is based on the agave crane structure in which I am exploring a new method of construction using flat sheets folded and assembled from laser cut parts. In the second I am working to refine the forms and mechanisms from the Willow Oak sculpture into a series, starting with some smaller “saplings”. In the third, I am beginning a reissue of the One Kernel Popcorn Poppers.
Bio
Jeremy Waak was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. At an early age, he began to pursue creative endeavors, such as drawing and painting, which have remained integral activities for him. Being the child of a mechanic, Jeremy was heavily influenced by cars, engines, and all things mechanical.
Jeremy attended the Memphis College of Art as an undergraduate and majored in metalsmithing. In Memphis, he began to explore the design and creation of mechanisms, which spawned the first in a series of hand-held devices called the One Kernel Popcorn Popper. These disarmingly funny objects have allowed him to explore his love of the mechanical while making social commentary about our relationship to gadgets, planned obsolescence, absurdity, and Americana.
Jeremy continued to hone this body of work as a graduate student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His work in graduate school culminated in a thesis show titled, One Kernel Popcorn Popper. This work earned him an Illinois Arts Council Grant in 2002.
In 2010, he began a ten-year project converting an 19th century warehouse and blacksmith’s shop into a home and studio. After sixteen years in higher education, Associate Professor at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, Jeremy is now a full-time studio artist.
His current interest is in exploring new work involving industrial imagery/mechanisms hybridized with plant/animal subject matter. His studio practice includes functional objects, wearable artwork and jewelry, gallery installations and public artworks.