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Jeremy Mayer is an Oakland, California sculptor who creates full-scale human figures and parts of human anatomy from one very specific material- typewriter parts.
Acting upon a childhood desire to disassemble a typewriter, Jeremy started out taking apart the industrial age icon in earnest in the early 1990’s, in part as a way to fulfill his desire to make art without using consumer products, but also because he found that sculpture was a very expensive venture that required a lot of space, specialized tools, and exotic materials. Back then in his early 20’s, he had none of these. The archaic typewriter proved to be the perfect fodder for his creative efforts because of their ubiquity, their fading popular use, and because they required few tools to disassemble and reassemble.
He calls the work re-assemblage – he uses no solder, does no welding, does not glue, and does not use any object or material that does not come from a typewriter. He puts his work together by using the mechanical processes used to hold the typewriter together. The very screws, springs, pins, nuts, and bolts that held the typewriter together become, in his hands, the sinew, bone, and surface anatomy of striking life-size and lifelike human figures and parts of the human anatomy.