Artists Statement

I make things because I need to solve something—sometimes a problem, sometimes a feeling, sometimes a memory. Working with my hands allows me to focus, to move through questions in real time. I’ve never wanted to work behind a desk. I want my thinking to become form. I want it to live in space.

My earliest encounters with art were tactile and personal: a ceramic class at thirteen, a time capsule project with my dad, the quiet influence of Japanese design woven into the house I grew up in. These experiences taught me that objects can carry history, mystery, and intention. That a material doesn’t just shape an object—it shapes how that object is read.

I gravitate toward clay, wood, metal, slipcast forms—materials that hold presence and resist easy interpretation. In my sculptural tableaus, I use familiar motifs—tractors, busts, chainsaws, teacups—not to illustrate but to complicate. These objects aren’t symbols. They’re provocations. They carry cultural residue, but I reconfigure them into something strange, tactile, and quietly theatrical.

I want viewers to feel amused, nostalgic, mystified, familiar. I want them to misread, to laugh, to pause. The work doesn’t ask to be understood—it asks to be felt. Each tableau is a stage, not a story. I move pieces around to discover relationships I haven’t seen before. Meaning isn’t something I build—it’s something I notice, if it shows up.

My furniture design and sculptural work are part of the same conversation. They share emotional goals, material logic, and a sensitivity to form. Whether I’m building a table or assembling a tableau, I’m working with objects and references that feel familiar but behave unexpectedly.

I don’t consciously avoid clichés—I trust my sensibilities to catch them. If a familiar form shows up, I treat it as raw material, something to tease apart and reconfigure. Over time, I’ve become more confident in my own ideas. I used to wonder if I was doing it “right.” Now I know there is no right. That realization has been freeing. I’m genuinely happy with where the work is now—comfortable in its ambiguity, its humor, its quiet resistance. I make what I need to make, and I trust the pieces to speak for themselves.

About Max

Max Leiber lives in Portland Oregon, was born in 1956 and received a BA in fine art from The University of California at Davis in 1979

Max worked with the Agnes Bourne Design Showroom in San Francisco, CA from 1984 to 1996 where he sold his custom furniture designs to clients of the showroom.

Contact Max maxleiber@gmail.com 503-820-8010