Max Lehman
Originally from Fort Knox Kentucky Max Lehman currently resides in Nambe, New Mexico. Max attended college at Arizona State University in the 1980’s, majoring in Media Arts while also studying Pre-Columbian art history.
Most of his training in ceramic sculpture came by practical experience. He apprenticed at the F&R Pottery Studio in Cave Creek, north of Phoenix, while attending college. He later went on to work for the Red Horse Clay Company, managing the production studio and designing images for their line of southwestern interior accessories.
My pieces are often a conglomeration of unrelated ideas that somehow just seem to work together. I try to think about a series of disjointed or unconnected things and place them in new relationships to each other.
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My primary influence is based in Lowbrow art, or pop surrealism, this visual art movement that arose in Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Its cultural roots are inspired by underground comics, punk music, tiki culture, and hot-rod cultures of the street. The terms lowbrow and pop surrealism are used interchangeably. Lowbrow is often humorous, sarcastic, or ironic.
Having a background in video and web production has provided me with a idiosyncratic perspective for approaching my art and subject matter, one does not very often associate digital media with ceramics.
Presently Max is Webmaster at the New Mexico Tourism Department in addition to pursuing his full time art career. This situation provides a unique perspective of moving between the technological to the tactile realm on a daily basis.
