Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From Google Alerts this morning, a link to the site (zzwicky.com) of artist Zack Zwicky in Houston TX. A (small) photo of him from LiveJournal, and his earnest and good-hearted, but not very informative,”About” statement on his site:

(#1) Zachary “Zack” Zwicky: ZZwicky!

[About:] Aspiring to educate and influence students has been my focus for nearly two decades. Listening, understanding, and crafting a plan for their success is the best way to guide them. This is my personal endeavor: to inspire the diverse student body and community in my care with a passion for art – helping them to make sense of the world around them and exceed their wildest dreams.

He’s now an art teacher in the Alief Independent School District  in southwest Houston, teaching primary / secondary students who are predominantly “economically disadvantaged”. (The moral taint of poor has become so grievous that many people are reluctant to use it at all, opting to use the ponderous economically disadvantaged instead.)

Before Alief, Zack Z was an Associate Professor at the Art Institute of Houston for nearly 10 years. And he’s done a lot of commercial work of one kind or another, so that we find on LiveJournal:

[About:] Results-oriented Marketing Communications professional with a passion for crafting compelling messages. Extensive project management skills, expert knowledge of print and digital marketing, and a history of teaching others to become creative problem solvers.

An artist’s site. Artists’ sites are frequently frustrating, barely organized piles of images for you to look at. Zack Z’s site is no better than most; there are sections labeled by laconic category, but the labels weren’t easy for me to interpret: is “student work” work by his students (I assume the “7th grade” works are, also the “Self-portraits” of Black people) or work by him as a student (in his early studies, then a BA in Graphic Communications from the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale (1998 – 2000) and an MFA in Graphic Communications from the Univ. of Houston (2006 – 2009))?

But after jettisoning all of that, I was still left with several categories of material I can sample for you. One — “movie posters” is, I assume, straightforwardly commercial work:

(#2) ZZ poster for the movie; we don’t know who commissioned this version

From Wikipedia:

(#3) The theatrical poster for the movie

London Boulevard is a 2010 British independent crime film released in the United Kingdom on 26 November 2010. It is based on Ken Bruen’s novel of 2001 of the same name, with screenplay and direction by William Monahan, marking his directorial debut. The cast features Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley and Ray Winstone.

Then, from ZZ’s clever “book sculpture” category:

(#4) Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions

There’s a series of these — made for whom or for what occasion, I don’t know. Similarly for his series of “type designer posters”, for instance:

(#5) The Goudy poster, about the designer, in one of his typefaces

On to Zach Zwickys. Starting with what I believe to be the first total-jock Zwicky on this blog. Zach Zwicky #1, St. Thomas More High School (Milwaukee WI), class of 2018,  where he played football as a freshman and sophomore, volleyball in his senior year, and basketball and baseball all 4 years, with an intense attachment to baseball, looking forward to making it into the pros.

The young man is huge — 6ʹ8ʺ, 230 lbs — and lives the jock life: his Twitter postings are  references to his pitching for the Bryant & Stratton [Junior] College (Wauwatosa WI) Bobcats baseball team; exhibitions of his intense sports fandom (especially in football); and video clips of guys enthusiastically doing weight training.

Unfortunately I haven’t been about to find any photo of him beyond a couple of tiny, blurry ones.

Then Zach Zwicky #2, from Victoria BC, where he’s an Interactive Marketing Analyst at Plena Global Holdings (who studied Political Science at the Univ. of Victoria 2017 – 2019). Photo from LinkedIn:

(#6) ZZ at Plena: Plena Global is a B2B cannabis production company supplying high-quality medical-grade cannabis to licensed producers, pharmaceutical companies

And finally Zach Zwicky #3, a VMware Servers and Desktop Engineer in Long Beach CA:

(#7) Zachariah Zwicky, who’s also an Air Force veteran

This entry was posted on November 6, 2021 at 10:17 am and is filed under Art, Movies and tv, Zwickys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.