Artist Highlight: Ian Fichman
Photo by Pedro Wazzan.
Ian Fichman is a Bakehouse artist whose practice is mainly comprised of metalwork and illustration. In seeking to defy the familiar, each sculpture he creates is uniquely assembled in an effort to bring new characters to life. Ultimately, Fichman's stylized skeletal figures aim to chronicle his own experiences, in a way that anyone may identify with.
Can you tell us about your artistic practice?
My artistic practice is quite grueling. Each piece begins with a simple pose for which I am the model. My choices are based mainly on movement and aesthetics and creating a straightforward narrative. Each work requires a lot of physical labor, fire, and electricity to create—not to mention blood, sweat and tears. Steel is limited in its range of motion, so it takes a particular amount of skill and patience to make it do what I want.
I put my works together much like a Lego set. I typically start with the torso shape and then build outward. The hands tend to be the pivotal point in the work. I end up taking an exorbitant amount of time creating them. I put as much personality and motion into them as possible, as it is evident that once added, they really bring the entire sculpture to life. The hands, in my view, become the face of the figure. The figures remain faceless because they are about all of us, not just one particular character.
Then, I work back through and add all the other elements to bulk up the mass, correct proportions, and add counterweights onto areas like the legs and ankles. On average they take about 3 to 6 months to complete.
Each sculpture is given a fitting cliché as a title, but also a “codename” of sorts. The title is what the piece is called, but not what people tend to call it. They tend to call it a one-word phrase, which ends up being the “codename,” or what the piece is commonly referred to as.
Tell us about a personal artistic project or body of work that you are currently excited about.
I’m very excited about my new series entitled HOLLOWS. They are very simplistic compared to my other work, with a retro-futuristic boxy aesthetic. There are quadrupeds that simply consist of a piece of medium sized square tube for a body and then I fabricate their robotic legs.
I feel like they’re a fun departure from my normal stuff. They’re more easily engaged with by the general public. Generally, I just think they’re really cute.
Tell us about how you have developed as an artist since you began working at Bakehouse
I consider myself extremely lucky to be a resident at the Bakehouse Art Complex. It’s hard to name all the ways in which this facility has helped me grow as an artist. From being able to create friendships with my peers, being part of an amazing group of people with the common goal to continue creating art every day, to our community’s easy access to various and numerous opportunities to display artwork and study all sorts of different mediums. This is not to mention all the art shows, sales, and inquiries.
In my humble opinion, Bakehouse Art Complex is one of the most valuable institutions that we have in Miami-Dade County.