MEET THE ARTIST: Ian Pfaff, Making Something Out of Nothing

For our 6th edition of MEET THE ARTIST, we’re proud to spotlight Ian Pfaff, a Forest Park artist, filmmaker, and lifelong maker who transforms everyday objects and discarded materials into imaginative miniature worlds that spark curiosity, humor, and wonder.

Ian’s creative world exists somewhere between fine art, filmmaking, prop building, and pure experimentation. His work doesn’t necessarily come with a message or tell you what to think. Instead, it invites you to look closer, have a little fun, and wonder how something so unexpected came to be.

Ian describes himself as “always an arty kid,” who ended up going to film school at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His experience there was both humbling and inspiring, as he was surrounded by a wide variety of extremely talented artists.

Over the years he has worked as video director, creating a variety of content for companies such as Funny or Die, ABC, Nickelodeon and MTV.

But his creative instincts have always extended beyond the screen.

During film school, Ian’s senior project centered around a man who builds a woman out of garbage. The idea stuck. From then on, he began seeing discarded objects differently. A piece of trash wasn’t necessarily trash. It might be the perfect piece for something he hadn’t imagined yet.

After moving back to Chicago during COVID, Ian began creating miniatures and dioramas simply to fill the time. The projects quickly became more than a distraction.

Forest Park’s Garage Galleries, where residents turn their garages into temporary art spaces, gave him an opportunity to share his work. Ian put his miniatures in a small corner of his garage, and people immediately responded.
The following year, he made more.

People bought them.

Inspired by his miniatures room at Garage Galleries, the Forest Park Art’s Alliance asked Ian to make an installation. In 2025 he built Little Perspectives, a large-scale diorama that was displayed at Constitution Court.

Today, Ian continues to build miniature worlds from whatever catches his eye. Old printers are among his favorite materials. Once taken apart, they reveal gears, wires, springs, circuit boards, and strange mechanical pieces that can become something entirely different.

His neighbors have caught on. They now leave old printers on his porch.

Ian’s creative process is almost entirely instinctive. He doesn’t typically begin with a detailed plan or drawing. In fact, when he tries to plan something too carefully, he says it usually doesn’t work.

Instead, an idea appears.

He might wait a few days to see if it sticks. But if he can’t stop thinking about it, he knows he needs to make it.

That process of discovery is what makes the work so enjoyable. A piece starts as a fuzzy idea and gradually becomes something tangible through experimentation, problem-solving, and simply seeing what happens next.
For Ian, the making is often more important than the finished object.

Ian’s love of building strange and imaginative objects has found a particularly perfect home in one of Forest Park’s most wonderfully unconventional traditions: the Forest Park Casket Races.

For the last five years, Ian, along with a team of his friends called “The Dead Last,” have built and raced their own caskets. Ian’s drawings and miniatures on display at U3 are of the five caskets The Dead Last have made for the Casket Races: The Gore-Vette, Frank & Stein, Monster Truck, Coroner Café, and Bob.

Each year, the team’s goal is to win the award for “Creepiest Casket.” So far, they’ve won that award all five years they participated. Never the fastest runners in the races, the team’s motto is: All show, no go.

The Casket Races are what made Ian fall in love with Forest Park, capturing much of what makes Ian’s work so engaging: meticulous craftsmanship without taking itself too seriously. There is storytelling, humor, absurdity, and a genuine love of making something simply because it will bring people joy.

A casket becomes a race car.

A race car becomes a character.

And a neighborhood event becomes an opportunity for an entire community to create something wonderfully weird together.

Ian is less interested in creating art with a specific message and more interested in the feeling art can create.

He deliberately leaves his work open to interpretation and loves hearing what other people think his creations are about.
For Ian, it isn’t his job to tell someone what to feel. If a person enjoys looking at something he made, gets a kick out of it, or simply stops to wonder about it, that’s a success.

His Little Perspectives installation, created for Forest Park in 2025, is a perfect example. The large-scale miniature installation featured a series of tiny scenes viewed through individual windows, encouraging visitors to look, explore, and create their own interpretations rather than follow a single narrative.

The goal wasn’t to explain. It was to make people curious.

At the heart of Ian’s work is a love of the creative process itself. An idea starts out fuzzy. Materials are gathered. Things are taken apart, rearranged, experimented with, and rebuilt. Eventually, something emerges that didn’t exist before. The finished piece becomes a record of that process.

And while Ian understands why artists can eventually let go of their work, there is something special about seeing someone else enjoy the thing you made. Because then you realize you didn’t just make it for yourself. You made something that became part of someone else’s experience.

Ian’s work is ultimately about transformation. A discarded printer becomes a miniature machine. A piece of garbage becomes a prop. A pile of random objects becomes a tiny world. A casket becomes the Gore-Vette. It’s the same instinct that has followed Ian throughout his career in film, television, and art: take the pieces you have and make something out of them.

Maybe that’s why his simple philosophy says it all:

“I just like makin’ stuff!”

We’re so proud to feature Ian Pfaff in our MEET THE ARTIST series and share his wonderfully imaginative work with the U3 community.

To explore more of Ian’s creative work, visit ianpfaff.com or follow him on Instagram at @springbreak1984.

Next time you see one of Ian’s creations, take a closer look. You might find an old printer part, a discarded object, a miniature world—or even a casket ready to race. Whatever it is, chances are Ian has found a way to make something unexpected out of it.