the artist

Zach Balousek is an artist and a musician with a focus in creating interactive and musical sculptures. Drawing from his formal training as a ceramicist and his experience as a carpenter and a set builder, he employs a wide range of materials to create sculptures with an added element of surprise and intrigue. He discovered his love of ceramics while working toward a degree in anthropology, and would bring these interests and disciplines to his future work. The connection to distant cultures and the past was an inherent part of the craft that would lead him to digging and processing his own clay and experimenting with primitive firing techniques. He has incorporated wood, gut, and animal hide into his sculptures, to create an illusion of history within the objects. As he cultivated new skills working in the trades and the film industry, he found new direction and scale in his work. By utilizing materials such as concrete, steel, PVC and fiberglass he has been able to bring his larger than life creations outside where the public can engage and connect with the work in a very personal way.

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Balousek earned his BFA in ceramics and a minor in art history from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. He was a resident artist of Terra Incognito in Oak Park, IL where he also served as resident coordinator and would later teach adult clay classes. He was the shop manager for Space Constructors, an architecture, design and build firm in St Louis. In addition to making sculpture, Balousek also works as a studio mechanic, building sets for Chicago’s TV and film industry. He has been exhibited throughout the midwest and has been the recipient of several juried awards. His studio is based in Chicago.