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the middle of the end . Maccabee Shelley. April 19 - May 24, 2025. Debut Solo Exhibition.

4478 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016.

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headspace

“we should talk more”

Now that I'm looking at it thinking of calling it "we should talk more”

“Been thinking about the kind of headspace of talking on the phone, on a landline. Like absent minded but also totally present in that conversation

Oh, I immediately remember that hovering state of mind, a sort of suspended time—

Yeah! Sitting there on your bed twirling the phone cord in your finger…

Hah! I mean, I didn’t do that—and these are cordless—but I definitely get the headspace thing,”

or, the different language of that space/time: of the way phases of objects and technologies generate specific kinds of irreplaceable (but reproduceable?) relations, pleasures, desires. That’s what disappears or sublimates into obsolescence, that way of talking. Those speeds or paces of connection or communication. And they might not even evolve (like a technology itself), they might just be replaced, substituted, subtracted, exchanged, transacted-on. And all for the sake of faster, faster, fastest?—everyone’s always saying at the prime rate of the market. Instant items.

But not talking…. There’s a necessary lag there, an unavoidable waste of time. A functional forgetting.

I'll keep you posted and stay in touch. For the show I’m feeling “the middle of the end”

For the microphone piece you already have. What do you think about the title cross-talk

Crosstalk

I keep forgetting my phone when I go to the studio which is actually great but I'm a little ahead of my photos now.

I'm trying to ignore the urge to set up the space too much and just fill needs as I come to them.

Thinking about multiples and contextualizing them with each other and some kin/d/g of buffer with the space

Thinking about how I can make different changes at different stages of the process. Happy about the cross section.

Loving all of this. Definitely interested in hearing how working with different stages of the process is going (seems like an important exploration route in general). And sorry for the lag we've been stuck in the trenches….

Happy New Year!

Thank you. Unbelievable what’s going on down there. We can catch up when things settle down. Things are good here if anyone needs to get out of LA

Hey hey! Absolutely love the way this one came out. It would be great to catch-up this weekend—how is Sunday afternoon for you? Any time after 4 on Sunday works for us if you're available

The fires took over. And with all the political chaos on the menu it's a bleary slew of feelings.

Hope you're doing alright up there!

(Seeing the objects in the molds really creates some strange sense of time)

I usually just do old fashioned but it might be fun to do a video chat here to show you some new stuff.

5ish Sunday sounds good.

Woah! I think it really hits me when moving between the more translucent and the opaque color like this—very different emotions and memories are triggered depending on it being solid-looking or not.

Thanks! I had a really "illuminating" experience with this one. Under fluorescent lighting all I saw was surface but later I looked at with no lights except a high window and the clear part was glowing. The contrast read beautifully.

Also interesting because there’s a tension between the trace of the form (the actual shape of the calculator) and the pattern of the material itself. So there’s a double if not triple awareness of material and object (and context).

Hoping to get this off craigslist free. The text from the post would be a great title

Been having some fun

Web cams for the eyes. My roommate’s nose (alginate mold), clay mustache and a computer speaker mouth

“The idea of security” The shape of a thing and the guts of a thing. What makes the thing the thing? Use or function? Around and around like a game of telephone until it reaches the end of the line and the screen dims and the theater lights fade on lifting the suspension of disbelief and again you find yourself alone and thinking about how we should all talk more. So check the ground beneath your feet. Is it safe? Up to code?

The lifesaver is made of glass and it might break or it might sink.

Hope I can pull it off

Will definitely be something no matter what: as a finished result, a ‘failed’ achievement, or just an experiment

Thanks! I'm definitely of that mind. That the work is the result of my actions and I have to take it at face value too. I want to get my thoughts a little more documented and go through it all with you. For me to get it out

Woah that looks amazing! All of the bits and color in it. Can't wait to see it in person 😍

The cassette is depression pink, post-consumer, and vintage uranium glass with found electronics

Hey, want to set some time this weekend to talk about the press release?

This was the one that failed in the kiln I was showing you. Sorry to text late. It just got so weird especially the nose.

Like you said the nose is especially wonky (but in a great way). It is also strangely stoic; to me, it looks super proud despite the disintegration, like a captain solemnly going down with his ship lol

Morning. I emailed you (even) more notes just now. Just got into an idea I've been kicking around. Hope it's not too dark or crazy lol. I've been a studio rat and am really looking forward to coming down and being part of the community, seeing art, and eating everything

Definitely not too dark or crazy, if anything it's just the right amount of honesty with yourself hah. And what you're thinking seems evident in the works even if I weren't reading or listening to your thoughts. So far all the works follow a similar movement along their own dis/identifications with themselves: they were something, maybe even more than one thing, and now they've arrived at what's not-them. But the 'not-me' and 'not-them' that makes it possible to be themselves to begin with, and also to not be themselves by the end (of their transformation, their lifespan). It’s more ‘Me,’ ‘I,’ and you that makes them, them. So to me what you're thinking is right-on in terms of recognizing and wielding this movement between these polarities that aren't really poles or dualities but multiplicities and spectrums. It's right there in the "middle of the end" place. Sounds like the works and the weight of their message are all falling into place together. That vertigo. That point where a work isn't even recognizable to ‘the artist’ as something 'they' made anymore—it’s more like the work just happened. Like some wu wei….

The forms and materials and ideas began subtractively, filtering out "noise" seeking "information" like tuning an analog radio or television. Tracking a VCR. Later it became additive, altering and comb/in/ing objects, images, experiences. Like finding a familiar tune. This shift marks the transition to the not-me. As the dialog with studio and process developed rapport and eloquence, I found myself in more of an observer/supporter role.

Lingerers: a sense of humor that’s also a sense of loss and despair. But only as much as the connections to other people that these objects use/d/ to hold. The (melancholic) precariousness, fragility, and vulnerability of objects, technologies, systems—and the impossibility of any industry keeping-pace with its own rates of production, its own languages and populations.

Anyway, looking forward to setting the stage—everything is coming along in its own way and I'm happy to see all the thoughts you're sharing summon what we've been experiencing with the work.

Everything is in the truck. Fingers crossed I don't arrive with more pieces than I left with :)

There’s a weird back-and-forth I go through where at one point I’m recognizing/remembering the object and then completely forgetting where I am once I’m lost in the coevals of the insides and outsides. It feels like I’m (at least) two places at once, which makes sense because I’m lured toward some kind of nostalgia in the same instant as I feel completely alienated, and pretty sad despite the initial sense of humor the work brings near me. “Laugh and cry, laugh and cry, what’s the difference?” kind-of-a-thing. An alienation from commodity fetishism?

It’s amazing how lucid these are at their breaking point. (Drunk with clarity, or something like that.)

Thanks it's nice not just having this experience in a total silo. Let me know when the press release is ready. I'm excited. Also been thinking more about the night stand idea for We should talk more and End of the line. Looking back I did a night stand (milk crate) in my thesis. Would be kinda neat to update that to a real one. Speaks to where I'm at a bit and thus what I brought to the show.*

(All of my poems are written in sand)

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Manual Device: on the origins of the object (at hand)

Glass transitions to more fluid states of softening, slumping, fusing—conforming and interlocking—at somewhere between 700-800 degrees Celsius. For most glass chemistries or make-ups, temperatures above 850C—or sometimes even 800C—are too high for the glass to remain contained (or take any detail) in a plaster-silica mold used for kiln casting. At 900 degrees Celsius most glass types become fully molten, and will only puddle or no longer hold any form. Compared to firing ceramics, the temperature ranges for working kiln cast glass are relatively low and the timing is more flexible. And, unlike the sustained high-temperatures of firing ceramics, the kiln is usually opened frequently, and more (solid crushed) glass is sporadically added to the mold-form through an open face or gating. (Despite the fact that there are various ways of (almost) calculating an exact translation of the volume of the wax model to the required amount of glass, this calculation is often inaccurate—especially if someone is using multiple types of glass or not-straightforward processes.) When fired at higher temperatures, the glass becomes more cohesive, translucent, and ‘shiny.’ When fired at lower temperatures, the glass is more opaque and often appears partially-bonded (or -broken) and fractured (while remaining structurally coherent).

Shelley works-through these various inconsistencies, instabilities, or errancies of kiln cast glass. His works tend to be found at the brink of falling-apart, with fractures and flashing veining and venting the delicate, but massively solid forms—inside and out. Several variables take-place at each stage of the process: he often uses multiple types of glass in each casting, and multiple firing temperatures (and sometimes multiple firings). (Mixing glasses known to melt at lower temps helps with flow and fusing.) His works show the results of firing at low temperatures and mixed temperatures. Often, the extraordinarily low temperatures yield forms that appear to have barely melted at all, barely holding-together its shattered pieces. Further uncertainties guide the mold-making and sculpting processes that precede the firing of the glass in the kiln. Some parts are molded, some parts are sculpted, some parts are found (harvested)—and these parts are combined. When working with molds, the ratio of plaster to silica is constantly adjusted and multiple mixes are used in each mold depending on the complexity and structural requirements of the forms. Also, these plaster-silica molds fail at the working temperatures of the firing process (hence flashing and puddling as on the third Got Your Nose! (2025) and the Roomba piece, Self sweeping robot but the battery is shot. I don't have time to replace it (2025).) The chance of the molds failing is increased each time the kiln is opened during a firing, as the sudden shift in temperature inside the kiln shocks the plaster-silica material—a paradox: “I want to check them to make sure they aren't failing, but checking them can cause failing.”

Currently, he sometimes incorporates non-glass elements inside the glass, suspended within the cast objects. For example, his pieces cast from molds made with (arrangements of) obsolete or disused technologies (phones, cameras, hard-drives, etc….) take the metallic and ceramic electrical components from the ‘original’ items and incorporate them into the glass forms. Chemical reactions of metals such as iron, copper, gold, and miscellaneous rare-earth metals comprising the embedded electronics occur during the firing process(es). These reactions result in erratic sprees of bright blue-greens and vibrant reds running in and along the suspended positions of the reactive bits of electronic debris (the ‘guts’ of the object). These colors run through and along the colorless or (multi-)colorful glass bodies of the sculptures, depending on the isolation or combination of particular kinds of glass in each piece.

A sample of this way of working and its effects is Duet (2025), which is made from a cut-in-half keyboard—with the halves stacked on top of one another—and the electronic components harvested from the initial device cast into variously translucent and opaque glass. With Duet, only a single type of glass is used in isolation: a commercially available ‘clear’ (to waxy-opaque)  glass. However, combinations of commercially-available glass and post-consumer glass also occur frequently throughout his works. Both Telephone Game (2025) and What? (2025) are pieces that combine various types of glass, resulting in many colors whirling through the work. A peachy-pink: depression-era leaded glass. A radiation yellow-green: vintage uranium glass. A celadon blue-green: Mexican Coke and Topo-Chico bottles. (The labels on these particular bottles are printed with titanium, ceramic, or tin; so, the labels persist through the firing process, with barcodes and letters often remaining visible in the final works.) An amber-brown: beer bottles. A caustic, emerald-green: vintage Coke bottles or the Heineken green of beer bottles. (The uranium glass is reactive under a blacklight, and illuminates its radioactive-green hue when lit.)

….

The earliest-known—recorded or uncovered—samples of human glassmaking are found in Mesopotamia and are dated around 3500 BCE. These early glass forms were not properly cast or blown, but sculpted or shaped while the glass was in a softened state. Small beads are some of the most common examples of these early glass works.

More sophisticated glass shaping (core-form casting and vessels) seems to have emerged around 1500 BCE in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Perfume bottles appear to be some of the first core-formed cast glass pieces. 

Glassblowing, which is considered an industrial and technological revolution with regard to the production of glass objects because of its contribution to the versatility and availability of glass-working techniques, seems to emerge around 50 BCE in Roman-occupied Syria. 

What?

According to the developmental trajectory evidenced by these historical remains, early glass-work had predominantly—throughout various (distant) historical and cultural contexts—been used for the production of aesthetic objects (more than useful or necessary items). Although glass is now widely used for utilitarian vessels, initial glass vessels or use-objects were rare and therefore do not share a co-extensive history of utility as ceramic objects and vessels, which were plentiful and relatively easy to make for much of human history. Yet this also shares a relation to the earliest ceramics (emerging as early as 28000 BCE): these were not vessels or useful objects, but figurines or charm-like figural ‘statues.’

The earliest-known ceramic work is the so(-inaccurately)-called “Venus” of Dolní Věstonice, discovered at a Paleolithic mammoth-hunting site at the base of Děvín Mountain in what is now the Czech Republic (this artefact is currently in the collection of the Moravian Museum in Brno). Other ceramic objects were also found at this site, including figurines of animals and fired clay balls. So, barring any future discoveries that challenge this paradigm, ceramics also started as a process oriented toward the production of aesthetic, not necessarily useful, objects.Or, maybe, the context of ‘use’ or necessity ‘shifted’—or, a prior utility of the aesthetic was functionally forgotten (or (aesthetics) becomes dis/interested)? In any case, the earliest glass objects were on or adorningly, ornamentally alongside a body (like a perfume bottle or a bead)—but not employed for necessary, industrial, obligatory, or useful techniques of the body—they were objects for being-made, not for making. Though, they may have been (aesthetic) devices: not crafted tools in the sense of ‘device’ deployed now, but in the sense of ‘device’ as something divided from somebody, from some-self because someone wants it: I want the split from me that makes the device, the object (divided). I want the object to make me (beside myself). (The origin of the word device begins with “Middle English: from Old French devis, based on Latin divis- ‘divided’, from the verb dividere. The original sense was ‘desire or intention’, found now only in leave someone to their own devices” (Oxford English Dictionary).)

(Hearsay.)

Objects | are | us? This division between someone—a subject—and an object is its (non-)use, its deviciveness. That I build a relationship with this object is how I use it: that it holds a manual—(unready?) at hand—connection to me. Or that it leaves me to my own devices. (Or that the object is left to its own device?) This division is at the origins of utility, but in its primary position or primordial formation, is not yet used but divisively deviced: a distinctly enjoyed division (from some body). A-part in me and you? From the start, there’s desire, intention (for something to become something else, something made)—but its eventual use was not symmetrical with its construction or fashioning. The work is not to produce an item, but to manually make an object of some thing. There’s hope, then an erratically resulting form, then a (lost) cause that arrives afterward when it is being ador(n)ed. Once it’s beautiful, sublime, or revolting. (Or maybe once it’s broken.) Once, once it charms someone into adapting it to a dysfunctional function, a bricolage. Charged with its accidents that make it usable, but not useful. A use (of work, material, process) made into an object? And maybe an inutile use of this object, but not an object designed for use. Object first, (mis-)use later. That’s why the utility, the useful object, arrives after the device (even though there are many ‘uses’ beforehand)—arrives after the desirable object. (And that’s why the object arrives after the device, or at exactly the same time: arriving with the division of something from me in the same instant as something is divided from itself.) And collapsed. No schematic: the manual is the device: is the object (detached). Is this the beginning of an object?

After all, “stereo” says ’solid’ but “a stereo” is divided by (at least) two once it sounds like something to listen to. Stereo-sound seems to surround me because my listening organizes my place as its completion, a surround-sound, that forgets the division of the speakers. Or, I’m at the border of the breaking-point between the speakers because my limitations surround them: I fill in the gaps with my lapses and lacks. (I’m listening.)

Maybe the proof is in this putting: a stereo (or, Stereo (2025) is cut in half to show you its solids. It’s filled with its surface, green, brown, and clear glass. And it’s spilling all of its prior states: a barely-melted Coke bottle flows from the sinking bottom where the whole thing turns to butter. Or, where it forgets what it used to be long enough to remember what it’s really made of. I can still see a barcode (but it’s borrowed from another exchange). My desire is re-routed through my distance away from the timing of the object—I’m the one hidden in ((a)way-in) the object, not its making; not its relations. I see it (un)made and I (un)do the work. So the value of my alienation becomes commodified quicker than the pace at which I can consume its production. For once I’m moving at the speed of an object.

Or maybe the inside is the only surface this time around? If it is cast from a mold of another object—if it’s showing us the space of an object clasped-between—is the outside another inside? Insides-out and outsides-in? 

In any case, like a bad loaf I’m left wondering how long it’s been sitting here, or if it’s only green with my jadedness and that makes me think it’s sitting there just for me—or that I should set it free from its Sade state of affairs. It makes me want to see an object escape or eclipse my limits, my own timing. There’s gravity pulling it down-and-away (but it’s not mine). If anything, I’m the only thing keeping it from disappearing entirely.

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Born in Los Angeles, Maccabee Shelley studied environmental and Earth sciences before earning degrees in studio art and ceramics. Intrigued by the perception and projection of value and obsolescence, Maccabee translates refuse through various materials and processes exploring the space between object, image, and experience.

Works by Maccabee have recently been exhibited in: spleen iiiii (Reisig and Taylor Contemporary: Los Angeles, California); Junque Show (Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California); Power of Ten (Steve Turner: Los Angeles, California); as well as numerous other group shows and projects in Los Angeles and Northern California (where he currently lives and works). In 2019, he received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

{Biographical information courtesy of the artist.}

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04/19/2025 - 05/24/2025

Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles) is presenting the debut solo exhibition of Maccabee Shelley: the middle of the end. The presentation includes 21 kiln cast glass works produced through lost wax casting methods. Shelley works-through experimental techniques at each phase of the process: scavenging (finding), molding, sculpting, firing/casting, and finishing. Most of the works (or their parts) are initially or partially formed through molds made from found or disused (obsolete) technological objects. However, the pieces are reworked at each stage of the process, with each step being its own momentary sculptural process offering unique ways of transforming the forms and the materials. The exhibited works display a combination of commercially-available and post-consumer types of glass that yield distinct colors, consistencies, and irregularities. Many of the works also include the metallic and ceramic electrical components that were inside the ‘original’ objects. These bits of metal and ceramic also contribute to the colors and consistencies of the cast glass sculptures: ranging from blue-greens to deep, vibrant reds that run-through the works.

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* “I had the thought that this whole 'middle of the end’ might sound like a mid-life crisis kind of a thing, so I just want to be on record as the first one to say I’m aware of that haha.”