Steve Storz, originally from the industrial Gulf town of Texas City, recalls his first awakenings as an artist when he picked up a rusted spring from the alleyway behinds his parent’s home. The spring started a collection in a junk drawer in his, normally, immaculate room. By the time he had entered early adulthood, his first electro-mechanical sculptures, monster heads with moving mouths and lights in their entrails, had been shown in the first science fiction convention in Eugene, Oregon where most of his ordinary schooling occurred. During the 1980's and 90's he maintained a cavernous studio in a San Jose cannery left over from the 1930s. The nearby Silicon Valley became a mountainous supply of electronics and cast-off industrial materials that became reshaped and combined into mechanical and electronic sculptures inspired by mad scientist oddness. His work included large scale installations for haunted houses, night clubs, film and performance-art companies, electronic and steel sculptures, avant-garde music, the World's Largest Top Hat and drawings.
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