About — Zac Banik

Zac Banik is a Slavic-American Jew who makes new things out of old things. He believes that difference is worth celebrating and tradition is worth remembering. He wants to bring people together, repair what is broken and put a smudge on every clean surface.

Zac was born in Cheltenham, England to American parents, whom he calls every day, and grew up in the Baltimore, Maryland metro area. He now lives in Portland, Oregon with his best friend and their three cats, where he creates art, finds clever solutions to problems, teaches craft and obsessively licks his teeth until his tongue bleeds and he has to sleep with a cotton ball in his mouth.

Zac works in a variety of mediums, including sculpture, drawing, painting, textiles and narrative object design. He describes his aesthetic style as folk-modernism, combining the radical formal explorations of the early 1900’s with the deeply human signs, symbols and evidence of the creator’s hand preserved in folk craft. His interests lie in neo-Hasidism, solar punk, practical utopianism, third wave behavioralism, speculative ethnography and the social model of disability recovery. He has worked as a musician, an artist and designer, a teacher, a mental health worker, a sewist, an entrepreneur, a farm hand, a writer, an arts administrator and, briefly, in accounts receivable.

Zac is a member of Gallery 114 in Portland, Oregon.

Image by Alex Broerman

Education

Rhode Island School of Design | Providence, RI
MFA, Furniture Design | 2019
Graduate Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art and Design

University of Maryland Baltimore County | Baltimore, MD
BA, Anthropology (Minor in Sociology) | 2015

Current Practice

Studio Nikto | Portland, OR
Principal Designer | 2020–Present

Grenville Games | Baltimore-DC Metro
Art Director | 2024–Present
Head of Product and Business Development | 2024–Present

Gallery 114 | Portland, OR
Member Artist | 2024–Present

Selected Professional Activity

Community & Leadership

ORA Northwest Jewish Artists | Portland, OR
Board Chair of Education | 2023–2024
Organizer & Curator, Mayim Chayim: Waters of Life and Peace | 2024

Art/Lab | Portland, OR
Workshop Facilitator | 2024-2025

Rhode Island School of Design | Providence, RI
Furniture Department Graduate Liaison | 2018–2019
Graduate Student Alliance Representative | 2017–2018

Awards/Honors

Residencies

Additional Experience

CV

Teaching & Education

Pacific Northwest College of Art | Portland, OR
Part-time Faculty | 2023–2024
Continuing Education Instructor | 2022–2023
Courses: Wood Joinery: Furniture, Freeform Quilting Intensive

Portland Community College | Portland, OR
Continuing Education Instructor | 2022–2024
Courses: Metals for Furniture Design, Visible Mending, Slavic Food and Cooking

Wildcraft Studio School | Portland, OR
Instructor | 2022–2024
Workshops: Drotarstvo (Slovak Wirecraft), Stone Carving, Ethnodesign

Slovak Technical University | Bratislava, Slovakia
Guest Lecturer | Fall 2019
Course: Follow the Root: Slovak Ethnodesign

Rhode Island School of Design | Providence, RI
Graduate Teaching Assistant | 2018–2019
Courses: Alternative Metals for Furniture Design, Speculative Design

Exhibitions

Collections

Museum of Jewish Culture, Slovak National Museum | Bratislava, Slovakia
Regional Arts and Culture Council, Public Art Collection | Portland, OR

Media & Press