About Me
Max Rayshich is an independent multimedia artist from Pittsburgh, PA. He has worked in digital/new media, drawing, painting, sculpture, film direction/acting, writing, and music.
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Largely having been self-taught in these fields for most of his life, he studied music for two years at the University of Pittsburgh's idyllic Greensburg campus, where he met many of his current collaborators. Now pursuing a BA in Studio Arts at the university's main campus back in Pittsburgh, Rayshich pursues multiple lines of creative work both in and out of arts academia.
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In his spare time, Max likes to listen to music and play tabletop roleplaying games with friends. He currently lives at his childhood home in Forest Hills, PA, with his parents and cats.
Artist's Statement / Process
"Pursue variety. Find things you like and consume them. Work on them. Burn yourself out on them and move on. Go where the music moves you."
"Do something."
For me, motivation comes from a lot of places. A lot of the time, I think it comes from a place of very raw emotion, where I want things to come out as saturated and evocative as possible. At other times, I just want to make something that I like to look at or listen to. It can also come from my sense of humor, my deepest fears, or my favorite colors. I have a hard time writing about these kinds of things - what inspires me, what I think defines art, what my practice looks like, etc - because I always feel like no matter how I go about it, I end up putting myself in a box. I don't know what my process looks like, because it's ever-changing. That's honestly what I've picked out of all my frustrations with this kind of writing; I don't know, and that feels appropriate. In what world does any one of us, at this exact moment in time, know exactly how their brain works?
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There has been recently, however, one point of light that I've spotted and fixated on; I always listen to music when I work. Always. I have an ever-growing playlist that's over 1200 songs long. I play it on shuffle, and work for hours. Often, I'll play newly added songs on repeat or in a newer, condensed playlist, and then slowly migrate back to the big one. You'll have Beatles, hard-hitting EDM, Childish Gambino, deep cuts from Gorillaz' discography, chunks of instrumental soundtracks, and the newest hits of neo-psychedelia all playing back to back. It's a surreal musical cocktail that I can't get enough of, and I think is a good analog to how I work. Things come along and I try to just work off of them.
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I like improvisation. I don't like building a plan at the outset because when I do, I tend to agonize over how everything "should" look, and I never actually start the darn thing. I'd rather just get my hands on some materials, start working, and see where it goes from there. Then, once I feel like I'm on to something, I can walk it back, refine details, and try to make sense of everything.