BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:ARThood VERSION:2.0 METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT UID:447:Event:137 DTSTAMP:20130524T62415Z SUMMARY:Benevento Los Angeles DESCRIPTION:MICHAEL BENEVENTO 7578/ 7556 SUNSET BOULEVARD LOS ANGELES , CA 90046 TEL +1 323 874 6400 FAX +1 323 874 6411 WWW.BENEVENTOLOSA NGELES.COM INFO@BENEVENTOLOSANGLES.COM STEEL LIFE ORGANIZED BY ZAK KITNICK WOLFGANG BREUER, MATTHEW BUCKINGHAM & JOACHIM KOESTER, W HITNEY CLAFLIN, MARTIN CREED, MELVIN EDWARDS, IDA EKBLAD, SAM FALLS, KE NJI FUJITA, WADE GUYTON, ALLISON KATZ, RITA MCBRIDE, CHARLOTTE POSENENS KE, SAM PULITZER, HEATHER ROWE, GEDI SIBONY, MICHAEL E SMITH, ANICKA YI EXHIBITION DATES: MAY 25- AUGUST 4, 2012 OPENING: FRIDAY, MAY 25 , 6:00 – 8:00 PM “I give people a 2000-year guarantee.” He smi les. “Just save your receipt.” Jefferson Mack asks: “You know what chi is? It’s life force.” “There’s a different word for it in every culture, in every language. You can take a piece of metal, and by working on it, you’re actually putting chi into it. And that s what we do. We put chi into metal. Chi increases its interest and i ts value to people, and it humanizes the material so people can have a relationship with it. So my challenge is how do I get as much chi as po ssible into the material?” With his lean frame, shock of silver ha ir and tortoise-rimmed glasses, Mack looks more like an architect than a blacksmith, and it’s clear within five minutes of conversation that he’s a builder, and a philosopher, at heart. “I’ve always built things,” he says. “I started doing carpentry when I was about 15, a nd I’ve built a lot of houses. I can finish a wall better than most d rywallers.” And that’s just because it’s a process. I want to kno w how to do things the best way possible. I’m kind of obsessive that way.” “Kind of” may be putting it lightly. Mack’s compulsion to put things together—to create—began in childhood, when his moth er gave him nuts and bolts to play with. “I don’t think she was che ap or anything,” he says. “It wasn’t to save money on toys. She j ust saw my inherent need for analyzing process.” Born in Vienna, A ustria—where his father may or may not have been a secret agent—Mac k grew up in western Pennsylvania, “in the same town where Jimmy Stew art was raised” (he says, in a spot-on Stewart drawl). After studying jewelry design and theater at Skidmore College in New York, he worked as a rock-and-roll lighting designer nationally, creating on-stage dram a for the likes of the B-52s and Modern English. His first professio nal job as a blacksmith was in a museum south of London, where his thea ter training came in surprisingly handy. “The deal was that I could w ork on the weekends and do my own stuff because they had to provide som e activity in the shop for tourists to see” Mack says. But I had to p ut on an English accent, because Americans had spent all this money to come and see an English blacksmith. So I’d say “ ‘Ow’s yerself, and ‘ow’s ‘erself, and ooh lovely to see ya now.” Eventuall y, like so many artists, seekers and rebels before him, he landed in Sa n Francisco, where he lived on a boathouse in Sausalito and paid his re nt by building houses. In 1990, he founded Jefferson Mack Metal. Ma ck’s designs are, in many ways, the sum of his diverse experience. I have a database in my brain—we all do – that cannot be duplicate d by computer,” he explains. In Mack’s case, that database includes an innate sense of human nature and our desire to understand our surro undings – to understand how things work. “When we can’t under stand, we’re really uncomfortable. This is a problem that’s really exacerbated by the computer age because we’re over-technologized as a culture. We have to use computers 20 times a day whether we like it or not and most of us don’t really understand how they work. We’re dy ing for things that don’t have hidden circuitry. My work is honest wo rk, done by hand. And it’s held together by something that makes sens e.” It’s a philosophy that belies the beauty of Mack’s work an d the wonder it inspires. As he’s putting the mind at ease, he never fails to delight the eye. His hear DTSTART:20100912T160000Z DTEND:20101017T220000Z CATEGORIES: LOCATION:West Hollywood, CA WEBSITE: URL: CONTACT: ORGANIZER: ATTACH;FMTTYPE="image/jpeg":http://www.arthood.com/public/event/1000000 /1000/137/60714.jpg ATTENDEE;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED;RSVP=TRUE;CN="Steel Lif e - organized by Zak Kitnick":http://www.arthood.com//event/137 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR