Meet Stuart Sachs | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stuart Sachs and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stuart, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
Learning to achieve work-life balance was one of the most critical components in establishing a sustainable and fulfilling art practice for myself, and after many years of trying I’m proud to say I’ve arrived in a very unique place. Early on, I fluctuated between many unstable extremes. I began with a job in nonprofit art education, but it was nearly impossible to support myself and it made art “feel like work,” leaving me depleted creatively and disconnected from the medium I had always depended upon through life to process adversity. I stayed for many years, unable to see that an “art job” or a job that is indeed genuinely valuable to society, was still not fostering my own personal growth or worthy of my undying commitment.
Eventually I left for a STEM job that supported me much better and provided more of an intellectual challenge, but now I simply didn’t have the time for art. Day after day I yearned to just be building out my studio and bringing my masterpiece to life. So I did what made sense– I saved enough to quit for a year and devote my time entirely to my project. This ended up being another overcorrection however; even though I had planned extensively, the pressure to complete my work caused me to repeatedly cut it too close and allocate insufficient room for error which proved detrimental in the long run. I spent the year giving it what I thought was my best shot, but demoralized by losing it all again and still not achieving my goal.
Fortunately, my next stop was the true turning point in my career balance. I found another position similar to my previous one, now with 12 hour shifts 3 and 4 days a week– For every 4 weeks, 14 days are for work and the other 14 days are for studio practice and personal life. This balance has been incredible for my motivation and receptivity, and the creative technical solutions come to me easier now than ever. My studio practice recharges me for work, and work recharges me for my studio practice. I find that this mutually symbiotic relationship that the schedule provides me to be greatly more effective at yielding quality artwork, in comparison to assuming excessive amounts of time and money were the barrier to my goals.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As an artist my background is in drawing, digital media, and spatial media. My BFA is in Drawing and after school I spent nearly 5 years working in nonprofit art education. I have had a studio residence at The Temple Contemporary Artist Haven and have been a member of Chant Cooperative for the past 4 years.
I make conceptual art through the appropriation and recontextualization of preexisting materials and processes in order to create new mediums and therefore novel ideas. All systems and tools carry preexisting associations and intent, so creativity is derived through their misapplication or subversion. I’m drawn to objects with unique factual histories, as opposed to choosing subject matter to attach meaning to. I’m also drawn to materials for their literal physical properties, especially in a world where so many miracle engineering materials are corporeally detrimental.
I have gone to many unconventional lengths in order to see through the integrity of my work, such as my pandemic project where I sought to create a very specific piece of jewelry– I began working in the injection molding industry in order to learn scientific injection molding process and simultaneously spent four years engineering a high-temperature silicone mold design to do so.
Through other bodies of work I explore our vulnerable relationship with emergent technology– most art implores to be read, but my work seeks to hide; I appropriate the user-interface design strategies of dark patterns and impressionist-pastiche illusions of the industry, and apply them through physical media installations.
My most recent major body of work consisted of collecting polyformaldehyde waste from gun-parts manufacturing and creating cascading sculptures that explore the toxic stability pertaining to the status quo, extortion of the universe and a notion of secular-samsara.
A future goal of mine that I’m excited about is to take everything I’ve learned in nonprofits, small business, and STEM alike, and to establish a residency for artists who would otherwise be deprived of the resources and facilities they grow dependent upon in academia, in order to keep their momentum and practices alive.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Most of my best friends and I grew up in Denver, but we never had the chance to really experience its offerings– so I would be thrilled to just share some of the essentials like walking into the small businesses and restaurants on Broadway, or getting some exercise in Cheesman and City Park. We would definitely visit The Temple Contemporary Artist Haven and The Armory, so I could show them the studio I’ve been building and they could see the studios of my incredibly talented artist neighbors. We would also make sure to see an opening at Bell Projects and connect with the community there. The biggest can’t miss would be visiting SP_CE13 Gallery, which is easily one of the most unique places I’ve experienced.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would like to dedicate my shoutout in gratitude to the artists Clifford Nalty and Dani Cunningham, who both have believed in me and provided me a platform through curation and collaboration to realize and develop some really special ideas.

Website: https://smsachs.com

Instagram: stuartmsachs