Nick Amato: I’d like to start with your backstory and how you began making art.
Michael Bala: I guess I never really started how every other artist began their, I would say, childhood career. I never picked up an instrument related to art until the end of high school, which was just like a camera. I got into photography and documented in ways inspired by Gregory Kon, Alex Sock, and William Eggleton. That was my introduction to art, especially in the fine art category. After high school, I took art classes in community college. That is also where my perspective began to change. It made me realize that it’s beyond the photograph itself, whether you print it out or scan and edit them all crazy or however one would prefer. That’s when I was introduced to the idea that you can make books from them. You can silkscreen the photographs and do all these monotypes, leading to further pursuing photography. I applied to universities after that. As I entered my first year at UCLA, I took my first sculpture class. I’ve never built things before besides knowing how to cut wood and the simple basis of using a chop saw. I was interested in the mechanics of material from my understanding of photography, where there’s always something about a photograph you can’t touch or access. Most of the time, the materials in the picture, subjects, or objects are almost like the truth or the closest thing to reality. What intrigued me with sculpture is that thinking about sculpture and photography allowed me to access this idea or this notion of making that takes the similarities of what a photograph can’t provide and what sculpture can’t provide—creating this specific imagery and, using elements still through photography as an idea of framework, and applying it to sculpture.
NA: Is there a different sense of freedom you feel from the physical nature of sculpture, as opposed to photography?
MB: Yeah. It’s the physicality, and this relation through wanting to touch something or seeing something enhances this material, providing truth or evidence because its physical presence is presented through form, texture, et cetera. Through photographs, you can take a picture of the object you’ve made, and it scales it back, leaving many things behind.
NA: Is there a recurring material that you work with?
MB: I guess there is a recurrence of material through the idea of found objects, or claiming an object in ways. I’ve always been attracted to found objects based on their past ownership and how it has this association through touch and feel, which is this idea of a gesture that never gets removed. For instance, these here on this sculpture are all found banister railings. There was this eeriness to it that I was attracted to and something that I shouldn’t have. At the same time, I loved how beautiful they ended up being. I think that stride goes back to my upbringing of the house I lived in, never believing in reclaimed objects. Everything always had to be brand new. So it might be this subconscious attraction to like a lot of found objects for me that I now reoccur in many of my sculptures with fabric to used hardwood tiles or a lot of buttons attached to hardwood floorings.
NA: A piece of yours came to mind when you mentioned eeriness being an element that you gravitate to. It’s entitled “Tally”, and it could be interpreted as a moment stuck in time.
MB: That was my introduction to being attracted to Trump Lloyd paintings. I wanted to approach painting more sculpturally by recreating a condensated mirror, more so the idea of a condensated bathroom mirror. I did trial and error by figuring out how to make a condensated mirror, which I discovered by accident by using mirror spray. It’s mirror spray paint, where you can turn glass into any reflective surface. So I sprayed it on backward, which I tried to wipe, and then behind it was already a mirror because I also sprayed the other side. Then I turned it over as it dried and was like, “Wait, this looks like a condensated mirror now.” I don’t know where the marks came about, but it was hilarious to always step out of the shower and see your original like fingerprint smudges on the bathroom mirror and a ton of tally marks. I feel like that also stems from my OCD and just having things perfected in this sense of repetition and patterns.
NA: A collection of your works was presented at the Line Hotel in Los Angeles in 2020, entitled Red Ball, which unfortunately had a short life due to Covid-19 lock-
downs. Can you speak to that experience and body of work?
MB: So that was like the body of work with the tally marks and smudges. Then there was another mirror with a game of tic-tac toe. Which was a condensated mirror painting of tic tac toe games where no one’s, the layer of games that were played on top or like hypothetically played on top. It showed that nobody won. So they were all filled spaces without someone actually winning.
NA: If you were an on-looker from Street View, the works could take on a new context. Almost feeling like something installation related.
MB: I never really thought about it that way. Like the idea that it lives on its own, and then the eeriness of this room that could be foggy or condensated knowing that the hotel was unoccupied. Or how an idea of the works is living in a space where no one is there. There was definitely this era where I was exploring various materialities and understanding. There were specific concepts that I felt like I played around with, which all revolved around knowing that a lot of those things stood still in this kind of distinctive way that you usually wouldn’t see a jump rope being knotted, but still holding a lot of pressure.
NA: I saw a picture on your Instagram of something you gifted a friend. It looked like a paper towel or toilet paper holder you created using a bungee cord. Have you crafted any other ideas that were gifted?
MB: It’s probably just the paper towel holders. I tried to make larger sculptures from that bungee chord, but I didn’t like the idea of transforming them so significantly. It made better sense for such a small object. At that time, I was kind of messing around and was curious about trying to freeze things. It was during the time of the mirror paintings. This corresponds to trying to make things stand still while referring back to photography and still snapshots, freezing this like a specific timeframe or moment. Besides that, there was another idea that I was supposed to gift to a friend, but I put a pause on it. Because I usually get tired, well, not tired, but I lose the capacity to think about materials that much. So I work on a few things at once. Work that I can bounce back and forth between.
NA: It seems like a balanced way to work. It can allow more time to meditate on specific ideas or help refine your work.
MB: Yeah, I like being around things, whether you’re like making them, touching them, or more so walking by them. There’s this subconscious part where you’re thinking about them, enhancing new ideas or changes. Critiques on it that later resurfaces that one can’t think of at that moment. That’s how I view that process just like having this scattered mindset.
NA: Sometimes, I’ll pick up some humor embedded in your works. Are you curious to know if that’s a calculated element or more organic?
MB: I feel like it’s more organic, but then also thought out in the sense that it stems from my ocd. There are some parts where I would want to make something so clean and almost like it was factory-made in ways. But then there are some times when finished things look too clean, and it feels more like a design aesthetic, which I try to revert from. I guess the humor part is when I feel conscious about using it to dissect the form from its perfectionist presentation. I found it funny to break this idea of gesture through sculpture. An example was this piece from 2020 or 21’, where lime is stapled to the mesh. It was more so this decision, I feel like humor partakes into the idea also of improvisation where more so this decision to add a lime was to fill kind of the space that it left with like the stapler, which I felt like shoving a piece of lime in there. I don’t know. I just felt like it would be hilarious to kind of see a lime. In its state, knowing that it feels and looks like a lime, it’s also not decomposing. It’s this idea of being stuck in time that I feel like I’ve always been attracted to.
NA: At which point do you find yourself able to step away from a piece or deem it finished?
MB: I guess more so it’s intuition, and that refers back to that question about the humor part embedded in my work where there are some times when things are fully made, and they’re too perfect. There’s always the decision to know when something’s finished is to make something that is a contrasting gesture, whether it’s doing something poorly made that’s being attached to something that’s exquisitely made and well refined. Where I think those gestures dictate if some things are finished or not. And it’s more about just seeing and encountering the objects’ presentation. In undergrad, a week before crit, a professor mentioned how if you know exactly what you’re going to make for crit, don’t bother bringing it to class. Then he went on talking about how he wanted us to explore and make things that fall under the category of unfamiliarity, where you can sort of encounter and make things based on intuition while learning other materials.
NA: Could you speak to some of the thematics in your new works?
MB: I propose making 24 of these works with my new body of work. Each clock will then be set to each time zone of the world, and I would want all 24 clocks to be cut in half and exist and stay in the States and then in Europe so that some of the time zones can also fall into their original time.
NA: Like the natural setting finding its way back home?
MB: Yes, exactly. Actually, I feel like I never really tell anyone these, but a lot of the works, like the padded envelope or the baseboards, are all segments of this idea of building this giant house. They’re all supposed to be this predicted room and be associated with what could be in that room or how that room is framed. So eventually, making a ton of these sculptures, whether it’s like hand railings to the floorboards, to the baseboards, and then to even maybe cook racks, I would want them to exist kind of or later then find their own home where you can mash them all up and create this ideal setting of what could be the room of a house.
NA: Can we see how you spend your studio days?
MB: I usually go to the studio after work and get there around seven. I’ll eat a small dinner and then look around at the works I’ve started. Then I tend to gravitate towards a specific piece that I want to start based on the decision of what to add next, and that is more in favor of my mood and how energetic I feel. I’ll try and tackle complicated stuff first by drilling 30 holes that are specifically two millimeters deep. Or there are days when I’ll take leather scraps and do like a dye cut. But yeah, I tend to go to the studio after work from seven to no later than one in the morning. I go to my studio from Monday to Thursday. I often make Fridays my days off, and on those days, I’m more so relaxed. I do the more intense errands that usually involve going to a metal supply store, leather warehouse, or this marble scrapyard, many of which are in Ventura. That was mainly my days off because it was almost a two-hour drive. So that’s usually just the schedule. It’s not strict, but it’s got some structure to it.
NA: To what effect does structure have on your practice?
MB: No structure wouldn’t inform my practice. By creating a system, since everything falls under the idea of making things at high precision, it is necessary to have the structure to maximize the time presented in the studio, as opposed to being entirely intuitive and kind of just throwing things or drawing holes and screwing things to other items and throwing paint on there. I need to have this segregated time one night for this, the second night is for prepping or painting, and then the day off is to see what it turns out to be after dry time. Before, I had a little structure. I would go to the studio before work, be there for an hour, and then leave. That was when I didn’t really understand the structure, and it messed with how I made things. It created a lot of doubt because I thought I couldn’t allow myself to take breaks, and it was more so this idea of making, making, making. It led to this idea that whatever I make will be good because I’m always here and surrounded by work all the time. But the best way of thinking is to separate yourself from the work sometimes. Once that clicked, I ended up being happier, and I felt like I was thinking with a refreshed mind, formed new perspectives, you’re more energized, et cetera.