We recently connected with Zak Miskry and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Zak, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is one the most effective killers of your creative spark. To describe it as something I’ve “overcome” implies that I never find that creeping self doubt sneaking up on me – which is definitely not the case. I’m sure imposter syndrome in some form will forever be a part of my psyche, it’s just the nature of the game. What I have done, is learned to not listen to it, and never give it the power to stop me from creating and sharing my work with the world. While I can’t completely erase that nagging voice in my head, I can keep it at a whisper.
This of course wasn’t always the case. In October of 2022, I went from 2500 followers on instagram to 200,000. In two weeks. The mental whiplash of going from an average of 3 comments on a video, to getting 26,000 comments on a single video seen by over 7 million people, was incredibly disorientating. Practically overnight I found there were suddenly million of eyes on my work, and I felt very sure that those eyes would see every flaw and imperfection that I had never felt confident enough to share on such a large scale. My instinctual response to this development was to stop posting, and hide, but I knew if I did that I would be killing all the opportunities that I needed to grasp. So I continued to create art, and content, but certainly didn’t feel deserving of those followers. Fast forward to today and now I have an audience of over 800,000 followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
So how did I overcome it? Instead of focusing on social media and outside praise, I made my art the goal. Making art that I felt was good and something I could be proud of, challenging myself to try new things, learn new techniques. Finishing a new piece, seeing that I created something new, that’s what makes me feel like an artist. That being said, the biggest factor was probably time. It’s almost been a year since I quit my job and went full time, and only recently have I started to confidently reply “I’m an Artist” when asked what I do for work.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I create animal sculptures out of recycled electronics and salvaged materials. Sustainability has always been the central theme of my work, visually representing the “natural” being displaced by disruptive “unnatural” technologies. I also intend to showcase the incredible beauty of typically unseen electronic components, promoting reuse alongside upcycling, and hopefully discouraging these being viewed as disposable. I share my work online and have grown a following of over 800,000 across social media platforms. I use this reach to show people the potential in “trash”, and encourage others to use their creativity to transform their own material waste, and educate people on the environmental impacts of our ‘disposable’ culture.
This year I hope to increase the scale of this. I am in the fledgling stages of a project that I’ve had in mind for a long time. Taking waste found on beaches in Zanzibar and using it to create a sculpture. I hope that this will project will really showcase the importance of keeping our environment clean and safe for all creatures.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three most important skills I’ve needed to get to where I am, have got to be welding, video editing, and general creativity. Creativity is the broadest one, so it makes sense to start there. People often say to me that I’m “so lucky to be creative”. Honestly I think creativity is just being okay with messing things up. It sounds so cliche but if you don’t mind trying something and being bad at it, then you’re probably going to develop a load of niche skills and talents that people will consider creative. I have made plenty of awful sculptures and terrible art, I just kept going with it, trying new things and that’s resulted in my creativity now.
In terms of practical skills, welding and video editing have been fundamental to my success. Without learning how to weld, I would never have been able to make sculptures strong enough to sell, and as a result wouldn’t be able to create on the scale I do now. I use a micro pulse arc welder, which is very niche so I had to teach myself through a combination of YouTube and a lot of trial and error. Editing videos is something I used to do in my spare time for fun, making small holiday edits and the occasional (very bad) parkour video. Over the years this ended up being pretty good practice for when I started editing reels for Instagram, and has been instrumental to my success on the platform. I’m now starting to branch out into longer form content on YouTube, which is a much harder venture.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
One of the biggest areas I want to work on this year is sustainability, and how I can make my art impactful in the space. One of the ways I’m hoping to do this is by collaborating with (primarily) tech companies that are committed to sustainability through their supply chains and processing of equipment reaching its end of life. An example of this was creating the butterfly NOVA for Colt Technology Services, out of their old network equipment. I’d love to work with other companies who are serious about sustainability and want to demonstrate that in a visual way. If anyone reading this fits that description then they can contact me through my website or via email!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.creationszakmiskry.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/creations.zakmiskry
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@zakmiskrysculpture
- Other: TikTok www.tiktok.com/@creations.zakmiskry
Image Credits
Kobi Westwood Sophie Tuckwell
