Today we’d like to introduce you to Zak Miskry

Hi Zak, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

I haven’t had the most linear path to becoming an artist, with no formal training, and it’s something that I never really expected to call myself. I always enjoyed art when I was younger, and made my first metal sculpture when I was 15 as part of my GCSE art project. I loved working with scrap metal and electronics, so I continued building sculptures in my spare time, despite pursuing science over art educationally. I studied biomedical sciences at university and worked in finance for the next two years after graduating. All the while creating sculptures in my bedroom with very limited tools. I was able to invest in a Micro Pulse Arc Welding system after I was commissioned by Colt technology services to create a butterfly out of their waste electronics. I shared this process online, and started creating reels about my sculptures. To my surprise, some of these reels started to go viral, and I went from having 2000 followers, to over 200,000 in 2 weeks. I decided to take a leap of faith, and quit my job to pursue art full time. It’s been almost a year and a half now, and I love getting to share my work with an audience of over 800,000 followers across social media platforms.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

The short answer is no. There have been an incredible number of setbacks and failures along my journey. Some that I expected, and some that completely caught me by surprise. My first commission was one of the most stressful times of my life. I was still working a regular job, so I would get home from work at about 7:30pm, work on the sculpture until around 12am, and then spend an hour or two editing content for social media before work the next day. This left me under incredible time pressure, and not exactly an ideal living situation – with my bedroom turning into a “workshop”. I assumed when I quit my job, everything would be so much easier, able to devote all my time to art. Instead for the first 6 months I found myself with somehow less time to actually “create” than when I was working full time. Setting up a studio, building a website and a business were all things I had no experience with, and I quickly found myself overwhelmed by logistics. I lost deals, contracts fell through, and everything felt like one step forward, two steps back. That first year it felt like nothing could go right, and was probably the hardest year of my life. Battling feelings of failure and low motivation, I went into 2024 starting work on my biggest commission ever, an 80cm Chameleon for the Government Digital Sustainability Alliances 2024 Summit. While getting the project done was incredibly challenging, it revitalised my creativity, and I’m pleased to say things are going much better this year than the last.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

I create (mainly) animal sculptures out of scrap metal and recycled electronics. Sustainability has always been the central theme of my work, visually representing the “natural” being displaced by disruptive “unnatural” technologies. I also intend to showcase the incredible beauty of typically unseen electronic components, promoting reuse alongside upcycling, and hopefully discouraging these being viewed as disposable. The materials I use are the main thing that set me apart from other metalwork artists. There are some amazing artists that create incredible scrap metal animals, but few utilise recycled electronic components. I think those components are an incredible medium, and give my work a distinctive style. In terms of what I’m most proud of I could list different sculptures, but really I am most proud of the impact I’ve been able to have through social media. Messages from aspiring artists and students saying my work has inspired them to create their own pieces out of recycled materials, fills me with a joy that makes all the difficulties worth it. I recently had a teacher in New Zealand tell me that one of my videos had been used as inspiration for 150 students to start an E-waste sculpture project. Stories like that remind me what a privilege it is to share my work with the world, and make me feel truly proud.

What does success mean to you?

Success is an incredibly hard thing to define, it’s something that regularly changes for me, and is by no means a fixed constant. I think really “success” has to be multifactorial, built like a pyramid. At the base, the business needs to be doing well, and financially successful so that you’re not spending your days worrying if you’ll be able to pay rent at the end of the month. Without this it doesn’t really matter how the little things are going, you’re not going to feel successful while being financially insecure. I have also found that with the nature of my social media following, I do tend to put a lot of weight on that performance. When you have reels going viral, followers growing, and more comments and messages you can keep track of, it feels great. Conversely when your content isn’t doing well, and you’re stagnant, it’s easy to start letting the imposter syndrome creep in. I’d like to reduce my depencance of social media for validation in the future, and focus on more important measures of success. While I could talk about hundreds of different factors, and debate their importance, I think the grander answer for me would be to feel like I’m making a difference. Partly that means on an individual level, and relates to the messages I get from people saying I’ve inspired them, but on a larger scale I want to be doing more for sustainability. Working with companies and brands that are making a difference, organising beach cleanups, conservation efforts, as well as creating educational and valuable content. If I can start doing that, then I know I’ll feel successful.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.creationszakmiskry.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creations.zakmiskry
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@zakmiskrycreations

Image Credits

Sophie Tuckwell
Kobi Westwood