Carl Zachmann

Carl Zachmann is from West Central Minnesota where as a child he frequented museums, both historic and artistic, and spent his spare time taking stuff apart to see how it worked. He visited abandoned farmsteads and dug through scrap yards, and would often return home with forgotten treasures, beginning a collection of artifacts that would later influence his academic and artistic work. He merged his passions for history, industry, and the arts together through the creation of his machine art. Carl’s kinetic sculptures explore the designs and textures of America’s industrial past. Using his background in archaeological research and his knowledge of historical mechanisms, Carl studied old archives and drafting books to learn how to recreate many of the curved spokes and odd shaped gears made from before the Civil War to the early 1900s. The steel gears are put in motion and accented with period technical drawings, paying homage to the Industrial Revolution in an increasingly electronic world.