Max Bailey is a multimedia artist from Portland, Oregon. He graduated from Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University in 2022. He currently works as a caster at Bullseye Glass Co.
He has kept up a drawing practice since his childhood and this still remains a prominent focus within his body of work. After graduating high school, he worked in 2016/2017 as part of the studio crew for artist Matthew Barney -- this experience led him to pursue an education in Sculpture. These two focuses compose the bulk of his work and continuously inform one another.
On the whole, material exploration has been the jumping-off point for his work. Though the concerns of a given work may develop into narrative, or formal questions, or thematic-wrestling, it begins always, necessarily, with the exploration of material: the qualities, characteristics, and given societal associations of the material earn primogeniture over all that comes after. This was the basis of his BFA thesis, Phosphene, wherein a story was told about the observation of a spirit, or an interdimensional being, through the use of material associations (a material’s varying levels of ubiquity, its relationship to humankind/flesh) instead of sequence or written explanations.
Now, graduated, without the comforts of an academic environment, it is materiality alone that seems the most precious vein to mine for inspiration. And as materials go, among the swarm there are a few in particular now intriguing him: glass, wax, ash, heat; and the list inevitably grows.
Instagram: @maxabaileyEmail: maxabailey3@gmail.comPhone: (303)-507-8671