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11th floor

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Kevin Asher
art from the machine

I don’t know where it all really started. I can give a date and time frame but that’s not really where it started. It’s always been there just past my peripheral vision, lurking, trying to get out.

I grew up in the burbs around metro Detroit. Most of my family worked as factory grunts. There was a deep pervasive sense of the factory everywhere. Every afternoon the local steel mill fired up a new furnace and it shook the house. If you stopped believing for one moment you were in a nice quiet neighborhood you only needed to look past our trees of suburbia to see the smoke stacks of the chemical factories and steel mills.

I think this is where it comes from. The familiarity with my material, the strong sense of industry, the flow of line and shape. It all comes from such a life draining thing as the factory. It’s origin is so deep that it becomes instinctual.

I’ve tried writing and other venues of expression but always kept second guessing myself. I would keep myself in check. Never realizing that I was inhibiting the process of art. Now that I’ve stumbled onto this sculpting (vs. clay or other 3D things I’ve done) I just can’t stop. I never think about it. I know now that would kill it. I just go out to the lab and begin. I do set goals and guidelines like: today I will make a chair. But that’s all. I let the scrap do the rest. I find a piece of something and think immediately that this is a chair back, or a table leg. I just know it. From that point on I build around that one piece. The rest always takes care of itself.

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Kevin Asher is a freelance graphic artist from mid-Michigan. In the last year his sculptures have received acclaim in several gallery competitions in the mid-Michigan area. Currently his work is on display at BC Beans in Wyandotte Michigan. In February he will be in Philidelphia at the Niche Design Convention, where he is a finalist in their annual design and style awards.

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