Bareiss Gallery | 15 State Rd 150 | PO Box 3366 Taos NM 87571 | 575-776-2284

Steve Storz

Various media have remarked Steve Storz as gizmologist, techno-sculptor, having mad scientist sensibilities, (his mark) scurries across surfaces and builds impossible organisms. 

Originally from Texas City, TX, he has studied and worked across the United States, including the rugged coast of OR, Silicon Valley, NY and currently an active member of the artistic community in Northern NM with studios in Taos and Gallup.  Early influences led to drawing organic spaceships and constructing crude kinetic monster sculptures. After an education of the basics of electrical engineering, he set up studios in demoded canneries of Silicon Valley, where he built miniature, futuristic-cities, styrene tower sculptures, lit with hundreds of glass fiber optic strands. Elaborate texture and details soon blossomed in all of his work. He combined electronics with welded scrap metal to make steel towers … windows often glowing, lending a feeling of inhabitance. Silicon Valley’s vast supply of technological cast-offs gave Storz the inspiration for an on-going series of Grunge Machines; unsettling, scrappy gloss black, or rusted, machines with red glowing LEDs, that grind, twitch, bubble, twirl.  Throughout, he has continued with mixed medium drawings and paintings;  interpretations of wild interior thoughts.  

Among his varied accomplishments are a Guiness Book World Record, tenure as a respected gallery consultant, founder of ART123 Gallery, continuing development of Lila artist retreat, and lead scientist and researcher of the Mad Scientist Club.

He counts his collaborations and friendships with artists such as Ted Egri, Raymond R. Avalos, Leslie Streit, Randal Lagro, Timothy Nero, Frank Turley, (to name only a very few) as his most important art schooling.

Artist Statement:

As a life-long, career artist, it has always been important to me to do “the work”.  I have cultivated a disciplined and dedicated work ethic, having maintained an art studio for 40+ years where I explore and create every day.  

My cavernous studio is important as an elaborate toy box environment of materials; electronic components and Silicon Valley cast-offs, aged wood, twisted scrap metal, drawing tools, and mechanical objects. This environment frees me to sift through memories and immediate moments of fears, frustrations, desires, inquisitiveness, all jumbled together. Inspiration is always there, glowing, turning ripe, expanding.  A landscape forms asking if beauty can be found in the undesirable.  From there, evolve gritty-beautiful combinations, adrift, untamed, in and out of my mind and hands as I draw, assemble, cut, weld, paint.  It is often skewed with an unconscious underscore of humor and riffs about the absurdity of life.  From these artistic excavations, artifacts are not merely found … I create them.

My work manifests as many art forms, but primarily drawing and sculpture.  The drawings reflect the wranglings of my internal struggles where I invite you to sit in that uncomfortable space that leads to self discovery.  My sculptures expose a fascination with the inner sanctum of obsolete machines.  I rescue discarded technology and mangled motors … reconfigure, reactivate and transform them into new objects with quirky movement, sound and light.  They often click, skritch, blink and glow.  Revealing their inner workings allows the viewer to join my appreciation of their hypnotic motion and often ingenious design.

I encourage the viewer to really let go! Evaporate time! Just be with the work. See if you can let its mad-making shake hands with your own.

stevestorz.com

Steve Storz​