ABOUT

BIOGRAPHY

Mike Silverman makes intricate wall sculptures from the components of discarded technology — hard drive platters, printed circuit boards, the physical remnants of our digital lives. His practice finds an unlikely beauty in hardware built for obsolescence, transforming it into work that is alive with reflection, movement, and meaning.

Silverman came to art as a second act. His background is in religion and business — an undergraduate degree in the former, a master's in the latter — and his formal art training amounts to a single stone carving class taken decades ago at the Pratt Fine Arts Center. Everything since has been self-taught: the design process, the fabrication techniques, the vocabulary he's built entirely on his own terms.

Based in Palm Beach County, Florida, his work has been shown in solo exhibitions and at major art fairs including Red Dot Miami and the International Symposium of Experimental Art.

Artist’s Statement

I build wall sculptures from reclaimed hard drive platters and motherboards. The combination of materials, the use of light and reflection, and the conceptual territory this work explores form something genuinely singular. Other artists work with e-waste. Others work with reflective surfaces. Others make conceptually driven figurative sculpture. No one is doing all three at once 

The work explores the relationship between technology, humanity, and the inner life — how we see ourselves, how we connect with others, and what we're becoming as technology becomes inseparable from who we are.

A Living Surface

The reflective quality of the hard drive platters is central to everything I make. They don't just reflect the designs cut into them — they reflect the room, the light, and the viewer, casting intricate forms onto surrounding walls. The work changes with every shift in angle and light. It's never the same twice.

Every Piece Has a Story

I want the work to resonate beyond the visual. Each piece has an accompanying text at the bottom of its page — an invitation to go deeper into what the work is asking.

Process

Design

Ideas come from personal experience and the questions I'm sitting with — and it often takes a year or more to get from an idea to something I can actually build. Some concepts start as sketches; others begin with AI image generation as a rapid ideation tool, arriving at something close enough to a working outline. The final composition always takes shape during fabrication, not before.

Fabrication

My fabrication process is the result of over three years of self-directed experimentation. I source discarded motherboards and hard drives from online resellers and dismantle every component by hand — harvesting the platters, stripping the circuit boards, prepping materials with heat and wet sanding. Each piece is precision-cut on a scroll saw, fit-checked on a grinding station, and mounted on cut-to-fit sheet aluminum.

Every sculpture is one of a kind. There are no editions.

Exhibition History

  1. 2026

    Persistence of Matter, Cornell Art Museum

    Delray Beach, FL • Spring 2026Curator Invitation

  2. 2026

    Kinetic Energy, Cultural Council for Palm Beach County

    Lake Worth, FL • Spring 2026

  3. 2025

    Red Dot Miami, Miami Art Week

    Miami, FL • Winter 2025

  4. 2025

    Tech Soul: Art from Digital Detritus, GallerRE

    West Palm Beach, FL • Fall 2025Solo Show

  5. 2025

    Perspective Beyond the Surface (Boca Museum Juried Show at BRiC)

    Boca Raton, FL • Fall 2025

  6. 2025

    Innovations 2025, International Society of Experimental Art

    Ormond Memorial Museum, Ormond Beach, FL • Fall 2025

  7. 2025

    Big and Bold, Carteam USA

    Stuart, FL • Winter 2025Second Place

  8. 2025

    Art of the Heart, Cugini Gallery

    Lake Worth, FL • Winter 2025

  9. 2025

    Waste to Wonder, Resource Depot Gallery

    West Palm Beach, FL • Winter 2025

  10. 2024

    VAILED! AI in the Arts, The Box Gallery

    West Palm Beach, FL • Fall 2024

  11. 2024

    Hopeless Romantic, Arts Garage

    Delray Beach, FL • Spring 2024