No marble or bronze for sculptor David Mach. For over 35 years, he has been transforming bulk raw materials and what many consider junk or garbage—old tires, magazines, out-of-date telephone directories, empty bottles, Barbie dolls, postcards, coat hangers, and matches—into memorable, wacky, inventive, crowd-drawing public art. In 1997, Mach told me, “People always ask if I have one big idea. I have hundreds. They come in torrents. And if I have good ideas, I want to realize them, make them, build them. But I can’t get them done fast enough—it’s just physically impossible.” Mach hit the headlines early in his career with a tragic accident. An anti-nuclear protester who set fire to his 220-foot Polaris replica constructed from 6,000 rubber tires—part of the Hayward Gallery’s “British Sculpture ’83”— was caught in the flames and killed. …see the entire article in the print version of December’s Sculpture magazine.
