MARTY ZIAJA

I took a rather unconventional path to become the sculpture artist I am today. In 1990, I graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with an Aerospace Engineering degree. Along with graduating, I accepted a commission in the United States Navy eventually becoming a Naval Aviator flying the P-3 Orion aircraft. After 11 years in the Navy, I transitioned to become a commercial airline pilot where I have been flying passengers for the last 23 years and continue to do so today.

You might be thinking, “That’s great, but where did you get your training in the fine arts?” The short answer is I didn’t. The truth is this journey started rather unexpectedly just over 3 short years ago. Around that time, my wife Holly became a travel nurse and took an assignment in Little Rock, Arkansas. We rented a house in Little Rock where I quickly realized, as someone who loves working with their hands, renting a house leaves one with little to do. I had no home repairs, no yard work, and no garage to tinker around in. I needed a project. Off I went to a home improvement store looking for ideas to fill my time. In the plumbing aisle, I found a roll of copper refrigerant tubing and wondered if I could make “something” out of that.  Back at the rental, I cut a 36-inch piece of the tubing and started bending it with my hands. This is when the idea popped into my head, “I wonder if I could make an eagle out of this?”

That thought has led me on an amazing path of discovery. Looking back, I chose the eagle “…not because it will be easy, but because it will be hard”. (Sorry to all of you JFK fans, I couldn’t resist.) Ok, so it wasn’t as hard as going to the moon, but it did require a lot of trial and error. Five months later, that “something” turned into the metal sculpture “Above All” you see on my portfolio page. I fell in love with the different processes and challenges while making that eagle. You can look on YouTube, but you won’t find a video on “How to turn refrigerant tubing and copper sheeting into a fine art metal sculpture of an eagle.” Trust me, I looked! It required me to discover what worked well and what didn’t. Today, with each new sculpture, I’m faced with new sets of challenges. The first hurdle is the mental challenge. I don’t draw sketches or detailed drawings of sculptures I plan to make. I must “see” the finished project in my mind. From there I can move on to the engineering and physical challenges. The engineering challenge includes how I’m going to build it, whether it needs to be disassembled, how to display it, and so on. The physical challenge involves not only obtaining the wire tubing and sheet metal, but the processes I’m going to use to create the sculpture such as filing, embossing, sanding, heat soaking, soldering, and welding to name just a few. Bringing each one of  those parts and pieces together to create a lifelike metal sculpture, is an incredibly thought-provoking process.

You’ll notice much of my art is centered around the wing and the wing in flight, easily one of nature’s finest achievements. For thousands of years, man has had a fascination with flight. I’ve been flying aircraft for over thirty years, and I’m still fascinated with the concept of flight and awed by the complexity of a bird’s wing.  Man flying a fixed wing being pushed by an overpowered engine completely pales in comparison to a bird in flight. Watch a murmuration of starlings, the awesome aerobatic agility of a barn swallow, and the backwards flight of a hummingbird and you will quickly realize there is an exquisite elegance of a bird in flight that no man in a machine will ever match.

As my portfolio expands, some of my metal sculptures are extending away from the wing but still centered around some of mother nature’s wonders. The intention of my art is to capture a brief moment in time of a subject by creating the most beautiful and realistic sculptures out of metal to be enjoyed for many years to come.

Marty