Jim Machacek ~ California

About Education
By Anonymous
San Diego, California: Bay Park Press, 2007. Edition of 10.

15 x 10.25"; 8 pages. The poem is set in 24 point Bernhard Modern and printed on Fabriano Rosapina. Housed in a closed lightweight fold with elastic closure. Designed and printed by Jim Machacek.

Colophon: "This poem was handed in to a high school teacher in Regina, Saskatchewan, by a senior year student. A few weeks later he committed suicide. The poem originally appeared in Generation Magazine in Canada and [was] reprinted in Nola Express. It was given to the artist many years ago and has haunted him ever since. As a long time art teacher, it has cemented his conviction that we need to let creativity bloom and nurture it."
$1,200

The Michelangelo Project
By Jim Machacek
San Diego, California: Jim Machacek, 1999. One-of-a-Kind.

17 x 12.75"; 29 mixed media pages. Housed in 18.5 x 14.75 x 13" custom slotted wooden box. Hanging hardware for pages.

Jim Machacek: "In late 1996, a faded, deteriorating copy of Romain Rollands's biography of Michelangelo caught my eye from a stack of discarded books. Its pages were crumbling at every touch and being in French, was not verbally communicating to me. Nevertheless, I couldn't throw it away. You see I like crumbling, fading, rusting, yellowing things and the visual communication of patterns and shapes that they create.

"The book sat on my mind's shelf for months until The Michelangelo Project began to unfold. I wanted to preserve at least the spirit of Rolland's book. To that end, I took key pages and treated them with archival spray to ‘freeze’ the deterioration. These pages became the base layer of the project, with collage pieces from the book's photo plates, fragments of my lithographs and intaglios, a reproduction of a Renaissance map, and other printed ephemera composing a visual text.

"Several weeks into the project, I realized I knew only Michelangelo the artist icon, nothing about Michelangelo the man. So the research began...several biographies including Symond's definitive, De Tolany's Life of, and George Bull's new; plus volumes on Michelangelo's poetry and surviving letters. His poems that you find in transferred text throughout the piece were chosen because they spoke to my heart and mind, and so perhaps to yours. Please open the mini books and letters in my collages and lift the flaps. There you will uncover a more human Michelangelo.

"If you lift a flap deeper or read between the lines or maybe just skim the surface, you will find bits of my biography. Ah, the artistic ego, the arrogance, comparing my life to Michelangelo! No, I just began to reflect more on my life as I read about his. And so I merged, layered and mixed... some of him, a little of me. Color tinted photocopies, gouache washes, photocopy transfers and hand written graphite texts provide a second layer of visuals, biography and my humble musings.

"I hope Mr. Rolland would be pleased that I created a new, albeit condensed life for his book. However, Michelangelo probably would be cranky that I deigned to cover his masterpieces with my biographical images. Nevertheless, please enjoy browsing in my book as you ‘read’ whichever biography you like."
$6,700