Looking like Fred Flintstone wearing nuclear protective gear, Zak Zakovi stands next to a six-foot high, twelve-ton slab of stone, carbine chisel in hand. His state-of-the-art Montana studio thrums with a cacophony of sounds; his body rumbles with creativity, yet “the stone-man” stops to wonder how stone-age men might react to his recent work: ‘Stelea stories’. “Those guys would be blown away — they would flip out to see me do in days what took them months or years to do!” he concludes.
Zakovi uses steel beams, pulleys and wenches to move tons of stone, then marries them with textures and steel inlays, urging the birth of symbols and emerging shapes. When they express what he’s intended, the artist grinds and polishes sections with diamonds, leaving surfaces that outshine the tool. His fingers trace the arrow design he’s zig-zagged through the center, enjoying the way it makes an organic transition into the spiral that extends the skyward reach.
An ancient cultural edifice, Stelea village stones conveyed both literal and divine concepts, communicating through symbols and shapes, a vocabulary Zakovi exploits in all his media. Adding an abstract element to the earthiness of stone, Z. Z. has these modern-day Stelea speaking a language that has architectural / art enthusiasts buzzing on both coasts.
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