Mickey Boyd is a local scultpor with a thing for the otherwordly. We talked to him about his space inspirations, mustaches and life on Mars, which was cool, but what's even cooler is that you can see him tonight at his thesis show from 6-9pm at the Center for Visual Arts, 965 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204.

Mickey Boyd is a local scultpor with a thing for the otherwordly. We talked to him about his space inspirations, mustaches and life on Mars, which was cool, but what's even cooler is that you can see him tonight at his thesis show from 6-9pm at the Center for Visual Arts, 965 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204.

How do you come up with this stuff? What would make you want do like a giant wood cone or like a pentagon shape outside?

I had this like, very strong desire to like build things and to work in a shop and stuff like that, because it's kind of what I did when I was younger with my dad a lot. He had a small metal working shop that's also his garage for his cars. And I just worked in that a lot, and it's always just been something that I, like, felt driven to do, and, like, acquired a lot of personal gain from.

Is there a particular concept that you're trying to represent structurally?

I think when I was probably, like maybe 19 or 20, I was still thinking kind of about space. With my pieces, I kind of built them and then think about what they were about afterwards. Most of them come out being some sort of representation of space or stellar geometry.

We hear your cone piece can be measured to use how the sky moves over time.

Right. I realized that you could lay inside of it and with each one of those little holes, you could look at the sky in different spots. It's big enough that you can put your head in. It's like probably 6 feet on its longest part and 3-1/2 feet on its shortest, so then you can kind of like, kind of, have these little quadrants in the sky, so the idea if you kept it stationary and then went out at the same time every night, and looked in the same thing and like wrote it down, you would actually be able to measure how the sky moves over time.

Did you set out to make a piece like that, or did it just happen?

That only came after I already built it. I said, "Hey, you can do that!" That was early on, I wasn't thinking about that stuff so much, but was more concerned about the structure and things. I think that structure thing has kind of weaseled its way into my work that I've been making more recently.

What's one art trend you want to see die this year?

Probably mustaches.

Do you have any weird rituals that you do you’re your art, or any bizarre compulsions or anything?

I pretty much always do everything wrong the first time, and just build it a second time completely different.

If you could do anything with your art, get unlimited funds like no obligations in life, what would you do?

I would probably commission a giant piece on Mars, that would be like specifically for Mars. I'm kind of obsessed with Mars, it's a really awesome thing. I mean, it's just like it's a dead rock, but they're finding stuff on it, and it's beautiful. It's covered with iron and it has a giant mountain on it – biggest mountain in the solar system – so big, that, when you stand on it, you wouldn't even know that it was so dark, it's so immense, so massive. Well, regardless, I would build some sort of giant tribute sculpture.

Are you one of those people who's going to Mars in 2024?
I wish. I fucking wish! No actually, I think that would be, like, one of the scariest things ever.