Large-scale sculptor Bobby Zokaites: Made in Arizona

Meet Bobby Zokaites. Bobby is a sculptor who often works on a very large scale.

One of his latest public art projects, “A Time Machine Called Tinaja,” features two massive sculptural arches — one is 16 feet tall, the other is 19. They look like two giant streams of water, shooting up over the park with a landscaped, winding path below.

It’s impactful in fact, he won the U.S. Water Prize for that piece this year. The Show spoke with him more about it and the community-centered approach he takes to public art.

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Full conversation

BOBBY ZOKAITES: When we are conceptualizing a project, we spend a lot of time with the community. In “A Time Machine Called Tinaja,” we actually we went into the high school, Trevor G. Browne High School and sat with every one of their art classes, with a map of the site, a box of crayons, and just got their stories.

LAUREN GILGER: What does that look like? What did people draw, these kids? 

ZOKAITES: It's kind of all over the place. We've gotten it better. We had mazes, we had stick figures. What we're doing … we’re not trying to look at their drawings. We're trying to listen to their conversations. Yeah. And the predominant thing that we heard in that project, because you have Trevor G. Browne High School, [El] Oso Park and then Estrella Middle School. … And the site’s right there in between the park and the middle school. And so the high schoolers were talking about the nostalgic feeling that they had when they went and picked up their kid siblings. Hence a time machine.

GILGER: So, it's a bridge between these two places. … In that sense. But it's also about water, right Like this is, this is to do with water in the desert. And it looks like water. It evokes water. When you're thinking about water and how to create something that looks like water in the desert, in a sculpture that is not water, here do you begin?

ZOKAITES: Well, water in the desert's mythical, right? … Like so we can do anything you want?

GILGER: [LAUGHS]

ZOKAITES: No. So the site. The site is ... an old water well site. … It's a beautification project through their office. So, really, when you're trying to come up with something like that, you imagine what it flows like, what it is. But also like we chose arches. So there's a portal, and sort of a place for the water to go, so to speak.

GILGER: Yeah. You talk about wanting people to climb on the art, to touch the art to, you know, mess around with it. It sounds like this is a lot about play. Like, are you evoking your own childhood in a lot of this?

ZOKAITES: Some of it. A lot of it is — well, I actually wrote my thesis on playgrounds. And actually, a lot of your playground equipment was designed by sculptors in the ‘50s. Your monkey bars. Your sandbox was an architect in Holland during the rebuilding of World War II.

GILGER: So, this is rooted in theory and in history for you.

ZOKAITES: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also practicality, you know. I can't sit in front of a computer, so I have to be in the studio welding and seeing how things go together and —

GILGER: Yeah. Let me stop you there because I have to ask you about that, about how you make this stuff. Because you're physically making it. It's not like, you know, you're 3D printing this stuff. It's made by hand and sounds like a kind of heavy lift, right? 

ZOKAITES: It's something you learn. I learned how to weld when I was 13, for a high school robotics class. And then over the years, it started out being a thing that I could do that nobody else could do. And then now it's super prominent. Some of the projects we're doing have so much welding involved, it's mind boggling.

GILGER: Yeah. So you've got a pretty large space to work, and I'm guessing. 

ZOKAITES: No, I have a standalone garage and an empty lot. … So, the garage right now, in the summertime, it's our ultimate fallback position. So, like, there's a small little air conditioner, and we can do small things. But most of the time we are outside in the sun. We do temporary shade structures and stuff to build these things. … Especially like the 20-footers.

GILGER: ... Do you ever after a project has been completed and it's up. Do you ever go by and like watch how people interact with it? Do you ever kind of sneak that way? 

ZOKAITES: Yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes.

GILGER: What do you see? 

ZOKAITES: Well, sometimes, like, I've got projects on the light rail in Tempe and they just walk by. But other times you get to see, like a dad have a special moment with a child. You get to see sort of, bonding over the, “Hey, look at that” … And that's super cool.

GILGER: Yeah. I want to ask you about something you said, because you're talking about public art and the importance of public art and the way it's used, the way it's rooted in this community or in whatever community it's going to go in. What is public art to you? What does that mean? 

ZOKAITES: So there's art in the public, which there's a lot of academics. There's a lot of people who make work and display it in the public. And that — there is a fine line there. Because you can have private money do that. With public money, you see it all the time in our area around the highways and the out the sound walls. I mean, in Phoenix, any piece of infrastructure that's been built in the last 50 years has a piece of artwork on it.

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GILGER: Right. Yeah. So, let's talk about the role of public art in Phoenix in particular. Because Phoenix is sort of surprisingly one of the leaders in public art in the country. That's why you're here, you said. 

ZOKAITES: Yeah, I came, I moved to Phoenix because — so I was a sculptor. I was a trained sculptor, and I was in northern Minnesota at a place called Franconia Sculpture Park.

And I was playing with, we had an eight-ton boom truck we got to play with every day. A 20-ton forklift. And we were making 30-, 40-foot sculptures, like five or six of them every summer. We were — 15-foot sculptures. You know, 10, 12 of those every summer. It was a crazy high output, but we were doing everything on a shoestring.

I mean, I was 22. I needed to go to grad school. Moved to Phoenix Valley. ASU was a very good school for sculpture. And also, the public art, and how established it is and how robust it is. So, I certainly view the Phoenix Valley as the leader for best practices in the field.

GILGER: I wonder what you think — what difference comes from that? How do you think it makes a difference in the community having so much public art and public investment in it? 

ZOKAITES: Well, there's points of pride in the community. There's also like — one of the things that's been really eye opening for me in my career is the idea of governance. You know, right now everybody's super frustrated with the federal government. You know, it doesn't matter what side you're on, you're frustrated with it.

Local governance is different, right? It's about participation. And so for me, like each one of my projects being tied to a piece of infrastructure, I get to see and have confidence in the water people's ability to deliver clean drinking water. … For 100 years you know.

Or like the Valley Metro to build the train, right And it's allowed me insight into the rigor that these infrastructure projects go through to be able to get the funding to be able to build these things and confidence in the people who are doing that. … And I hope that when we do the community engagement and stuff it's a way for community to, to sort of like break down that layer and start participating in their own governance.

GILGER: That's really great. So, there's much more to it for you. I want to ask you lastly about the idea of sculpture and going into that as a practice, as opposed to many of the artists who I've interviewed who do something much more two dimensional, right? I mean, like, it seems like a very different type of person who is drawn to that.

ZOKAITES: Yes.

GILGER: What type are you? [LAUGHS]

ZOKAITES: [LAUGHS] Well, my hobby, I go canyoneering as a hobby. Which is you take ropes out into the desert and you drag them and you repel down the cliff sides in the desert. So there's, like, some adrenaline there, but there's also, very much an understanding of what is going on. The safety procedures and the challenge.

I would say sculptors are super interested in pushing those boundaries from, like, a tinkering perspective. And not like a perspective of gusto, like a performing artist would have.

GILGER: Sure. Is there something about filling space that you like in this practice?

ZOKAITES: Well, sculpture, like big sculptures. Oh, the first time you see your own work picked up by a crane. Like, that's a feeling. [LAUGHS]

GILGER: That's cool. Right? That's got to be cool. 

ZOKAITES: No, there's a magic when you go from making tabletop studies, to even just 8 feet, you know, our architecture texture that we live within is built to 8 feet. So as soon as you get to 9 feet, you're monumental, and you're standing under a thing that you made. And that's a really great feeling. And then it's, it's a feedback loop of practice to work at that scale and get all of the proportions right.