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- Segovia, TX: Located on Interstate Highway 10 southeast of Junction, Segovia started as an early settlement with initial attempts at farming, which eventually failed. The town fluctuated in population through the 20th century, often relying on highway traffic, and today consists mainly of a truck stop and a few houses.
- The Skull and Sand Dunes: The skull is borrowed from "The Ambassadors" by Holbein and the portrayal of the form in sand dunes is inspired by Alexandre Hogue's "Erosion No. 2 — Mother Earth Laid Bare" (1936).
- Sierra Blanca, TX: Sierra Blanca hosted a controversial sludge dump from 1992 to 2001, receiving 250 tons of treated sewage each day from New York City, which was discontinued due to health and odor complaints from locals. The town is also known for its controversial CBP checkpoint and private detention facility.
- Sonora, TX: Sonora houses the Pentagram building, which has come to symbolize the dark ambience of the town, known for Texas' oldest unsolved mass slaying in 1968.
- Eldorado, TX: Eldorado was the location of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a compound which was controlled by the controversial FLDS leader Warren Jeffs and the site of a 2008 police raid that removed over 400 children who were thought to be endangered there.
- Fabens, TX Cemetery: Chilling ghost encounters have been frequently reported at a cemetery in Fabens.
- Shafter, TX: Shafter, a ghost town in Presidio County, was founded in the late 19th century around significant silver deposits. It experienced several boom periods before being abandoned in 1942 due to a variety of labor and economic issues.
- Horses in Tornado: The depiction of horses in a tornado is borrowed from "Tornado over Kansas" by John Steuart Curry.
- Rocksprings, TX: Rocksprings was severely impacted by an F5 tornado in 1927 that destroyed most of the town and killed 72 people, which some perceived as divine retribution for the town's cruel and criminal treatment of its Mexican residents.
- Contaminated Soil Warning: The warning sign is for soil contamination by anthrax spores, particularly in a triangular area bounded by Uvalde, Ozona, and Eagle Pass, where the bacterium Bacillus anthracis occurs naturally in the soil.
- Juno, TX and Beaver Lake: Near the ghost town of Juno, Beaver Lake was a natural reservoir formed by a dam created by a beaver colony in a desert oasis. In the mid-19th century, US Army soldiers were stationed here. The lake was destroyed in the 1950s after overgrazing allowed gravel from hills to sweep into the lake.
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- Cactus with Writing On It: When praising the detail of creation, Browne pictures a "needle of nature" writing out the finest aspects of organic forms. He offers an original translation of Psalm 139 employing this metaphor: "Thou hast curiously embroydered me, thou hast wrought me up after the finest way of texture, and as it were with a Needle." The end result of this embroidery is precise, but the manner in which it is fastened is poetic. While elsewhere Browne's needle weaves geometric forms in space, here it is literally writing letters. The "great Volume of nature" is written in a script composed of decussations — nature as symbolic writing, a book in which every creature, however insignificant, is a metaphor expressing a divine Idea. As his contemporary Francis Quarles put it: "The world's a book in folio, printed all / With God's great works in letters capital: / Each creature is a page; and each effect / A fair character, void of all defect." According to Singer, Browne had hieroglyphic script in mind — specifically a quincunxical interpretation of the Egyptian cross as analyzed by Athanasius Kircher. This symbol was sacred because its geometry could encapsulate the abstract essence of nature's creative force inside every specific detail. It's not a coincidence that the decussation looks like the Vitruvian Man. As Kepler summarized: "Those laws of nature are within the grasp of the human mind; God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts."
- Cyrus and His Subjects: What did Browne have in mind when he said that Cyrus brought the treasures of the field into rule and circumscription? Was it the literal seizure of land, the annexation of stretches of ancient Western and Central Asia through military conquest and resettlement? Or did he mean the harnessing of energy from that land through agriculture, husbandry, cultivation? Or was he just talking about the creation of a garden, a place of leisure and reflection? In Sardis, the ancient Anatolian city converted by Cyrus into the most important satrap of the empire's Western frontier, one could find rule and circumscription in all three senses. One of his finest paradeisoi was there, at the end node of the Persian royal road — a perfect, walled park with gridded quadrilateral water channels composing islands of perfectly interspersed trees. The quincunxical layout of the Achaemenid gardens wasn't lost to history; it lived on in Persia and the greater Islamic world through the chaharbagh — "four gardens" — evoking the four gardens of Paradise described in the Qur'an, many of the most celebrated planted at mausoleums: Humayun's Tomb, the Taj Mahal, Babur's tomb in Kabul. Browne himself references Ecclesiastes 2:4: "I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards." Shah Jahan, entombed in the Taj Mahal, died in the same year (1658) that Urne Buriall / The Garden of Cyrus was published.
- Donkeys: In his 1991 Master's thesis, historian Robert E. Ravens-seger outlines the varying attitudes towards the donkey in the ancient world. As a beast of burden, donkeys were a critical tool in the development of agricultural societies, but because of their utility they became associated with slavery and uncleanliness — ass-denigration, on full display in the Palatine Hill graffito mocking Christianity with a crucified donkey-headed figure. In pre-agricultural societies, however, Ravens-seger finds evidence for ass-worship: before the donkey was a symbol of servitude, it was associated with freedom — "Who hath sent out the wild ass free? … The range of the mountains is his pasture" (Job 39:5–8). In the Chihuahuan desert and the Australian outback, herds of wild donkeys still roam free, and dig equid wells into the soil to extract water. Used by birds, deer, and other species, and eventually becoming nurseries for the germination of trees, these wells are perhaps an even better example of Browne's ideas than the Gardens of Cyrus: a form of gardening seamless with its environment, manipulating natural growth to a positive end.
- Scythe — The Treasures of the Field: "The very word of paradise," Browne reminds us, is "field enclosed." Paradeisos, from the Old Persian pairi-daeza: a wall drawn around.
- Adobe Bricks: The Swan house outside Presidio was built using techniques adapted from the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, who revived traditional Nubian mud-brick vaulting for modern construction. When I visited, the complex was in a state of collapse, the adobe vaults crumbling into the ground they were made from. Hundreds of miles east, the brick factory in D'Hanis presents a different image of a similar operation: raw clay from a deposit on the banks of Seco Creek is pressed into molds, fired, and stacked. The bricks from these two places share a form but the materials couldn't be more different. The adobe is sun-dried mud and straw, soft and porous, breathing with the climate but dissolving back into the landscape when neglected. The D'Hanis brick is kiln-fired, hard and uniform, made to endure — but therefore inert. The same gesture of individuation yields opposite characters depending on the potentialities of the material that is formed.
- Barbed Wire: Is barbed wire continuous with the natural defenses of the cactus? Before wire, settlers on the plains used Osage orange hedgerows as fences, interlocking the thorny branches into barriers. Barbed wire was designed to reproduce this thorn in steel. In the Chihuahuan desert, the wire runs alongside the same thorny plants that it was invented to imitate.
- The Lizard: The impulse to scan a desert creature and carry it home as a 3D print is taken up at the end of the 3D printing book.
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- Progress City, TX: Located at the foot of the extinct volcano Santiago Peak in Brewster County, Progress City was a fictitious town created to scam potential land buyers. The swindlers sold over a thousand lots, convincing buyers with fabricated stories of a burgeoning community, despite the area being uninhabitable and suited only for grazing livestock. There are tales that the town was absurdly platted on top of the peak itself.
- Dust Bowl, Alexandre Hogue, 1933: This part of the painting borrows elements from Alexandre Hogue's 1933 work "Dust Bowl," which depicts the severe environmental degradation and dust storms that plagued the Southern Plains during the Great Depression.
- Dinero, TX: Dinero was named "money" in Spanish, alluding to legends of a lost Spanish silver mine that supposedly existed in the area, which spurred initial interest and settlement. However, the town was eventually abandoned as oil and gas discoveries proved disappointing, dashing hopes for a boomtown.
- Toyah, TX: Toyah, established around several artesian springs, was once a bustling trade center and railroad community in Reeves County. It was eventually superseded by Toyahvale, leading to its decline. The town was significantly damaged by a tornado in 2004.
- Texon, TX: Texon was founded around the Santa Rita oil well, the original oil discovery in West Texas. This boom led to the development of Texon as a model community, complete with various amenities for its residents. As oil production at the site declined after World War II, so too did the town's population, leading to its eventual abandonment.
- Indianola, TX: Indianola was twice destroyed by hurricanes in 1875 and 1886. Originally a major port, the town was completely abandoned after these disasters.
- The Camel Corps Experiment: The U.S. Army experimented with using camels as pack animals in Texas during the mid-19th century. Despite their suitability for the harsh desert terrain, the project was discontinued, and the camels were eventually sold at auction.
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- Blue Grama: Blue Grama is a grass native to the region, commonly used as cattle feed due to its resilience and nutritional value in arid environments.
- Goatheads: Known for their sharp, barbed seeds, goatheads represent a form of natural defense akin to barbed wire. This plant illustrates the concept of convergent evolution, where similar problems in nature and technology find parallel solutions.
- Chinati Mountains Caldera: The Chinati Mountains caldera, formed by ancient volcanic activity, not only shaped the mountains themselves but also enriched the surrounding soil, making it fertile for grasslands. This geological history set the stage for ranching in this region.
- Fence Cutting Wars: During 1883, the Fence Cutting Wars erupted as groups of cowboys, such as the Owls, Javelinas, and Blue Devils, began cutting through ranch fences, leading to conflicts with ranchers who hired armed guards, and eventually necessitated intervention by the Texas Rangers.
- Chinati Peak: Chinati Peak, rising as the highest point in Presidio County at an elevation of 7,728 feet, is a significant landmark within the Chinati Mountains. The word "chinati" is derived from the Apache word ch'íná'itíh, which means "gate."
- Texas Fever Cattle Tick: The spread of Texas Fever by cattle ticks influenced ranchers to adopt barbed wire fencing as a method to control cattle movements and mitigate the disease's impact.
- Sumerian Cylinder Seal Depicting Cattle: Sumerian cylinder seals featuring cattle were used for administrative purposes, including as signatures for documents and to mark ownership or protect goods. These seals often featured impressions to indicate authenticity and prevent tampering, similar to the modern practice of branding and fencing cattle.
Paintings, Reliefs & Objects
The painting method starts with collections of photographs, scans of objects, fragments of historical paintings, toys, diagrams, inscriptions. They are composed on the computer the way earlier painters used copybooks, emblem books, and printed devotional reproductions (sorting, compressing, layering) staged as maquettes and 3D rendered with lighting, and carried into oil paint, relief, and fabricated objects. The final result is aesthetically somewhere between Northern Renaissance devotional space, retablo and ex-voto conventions, American regionalist landscape, metaphysical stage sets, sticker sheets, and early web pages.
Commissions & licensing. Paintings and fabricated objects are available for exhibition and acquisition; imagery may be licensed for covers and editorial use. [CONFIRM] Inquiries: email →.
Amema
Amema is an independent jewelry and object practice, cofounded and designed by Zak Ziebell. Amema collects lost objects — vintage charms, celluloid toys, coins, buttons, souvenirs — and brings them back into circulation: each piece is 3D-scanned, digitally rebuilt or recombined, and printed in full color in Nylon 12, or produced in metal. The results are necklaces, charms, chess sets, and small objects that read as artifacts with an unstable date: part antique, part toy, part archaeological reconstruction.
Amema is a design practice with its own store, collections, and identity — not merchandise for the paintings. Pieces are produced in small editions and one-offs; a custom necklace creator lets buyers assemble their own charm configurations.
Shop at amema.us · Instagram @amema.us.
Custom & wholesale. Amema takes commissions for custom charms and objects — including pieces built from a client's own artifacts, scanned and rebuilt — and works with stockists and stylists. [CONFIRM]
Software
Zak Ziebell builds production web software, specializing in interactive 3D: virtual tours, real-space capture viewers, product configurators, and spatial interfaces. He works in React, TypeScript, Three.js, and React Three Fiber, with deep experience in photogrammetry, 3D scanning, Gaussian splatting, and asset pipelines (compression, LODs, streaming) that allow heavy 3D content in browser.
He is currently Lead Engineer at Roomie, and previously worked on 3D capture and fabrication research at HP Labs' Immersive Experience Lab, built scholarly web applications at Brown University's Center for Digital Scholarship, and contributed interactive graphics at Eyebeam.
Websites. Sites designed by Ziebell: danicakleinknecht.com · europa.nyc · lizward.com · trinityart.studio.
Working together. Available for consulting and contract work in interactive 3D, digital-twin and capture viewers, technically demanding visual interfaces, and websites for artists and galleries. email →.
Writing
Untitled 3D Printing Book. Longterm project. Excerpt prepared May 2026: PDF (9 MB).
Essays.
Kant Optics, 2019. History of philosophy writing sample. PDF.
Punishment Writing, 2016. Art history critique writing sample. PDF.
About
Zak Ziebell (b. 1996), an artist, designer, and software engineer living and working in Ridgewood, Queens. Grew up in Castroville, Texas.
Contact. email → · Instagram @zakzzb · Amema @amema.us. For Amema wholesale, press, or custom pieces, write with "Amema" in the subject line.
Links. Parker Loris · Liby Hays · Walker Nosworthy · Amit Miretzky.
Zak Ziebell (b. 1996, Houston, Texas) grew up in Castroville, Texas, and lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens. He works across three connected practices: painting and sculptural objects, the jewelry label Amema, and interactive 3D software. His paintings and reliefs come out of historical-symbolic painting, vernacular religious imagery, and sculptural object-theater. He composes with found and digitally manipulated images the way earlier painters used copybooks and printed devotional reproductions — sorting, layering, and reanimating fragments until animals, saints, ruins, toys, diagrams, and inscriptions appear to have always belonged together. Recent work centers on religious, historical, and allegorical subjects; his earlier paintings dealt more directly with Texas and Northern Mexico — ghost towns, floods, and the way regional history is remembered and misremembered. The newer paintings grew out of that work rather than replacing it: the regional archive widened into a larger field of borrowed and rebuilt images. Ziebell is cofounder and designer of Amema, an independent jewelry and object practice. Amema collects vintage charms, celluloid toys, coins, and other small forgotten objects and rebuilds them — through 3D scanning, digital modeling, and full-color 3D printing — into necklaces, charms, chess sets, and objects that sit between jewelry, sculpture, and archaeological reconstruction. As a software engineer, he builds production web applications for interactive 3D — virtual tours, spatial interfaces, and photoreal room capture — using React, TypeScript, Three.js, and React Three Fiber, currently as Lead Engineer at Roomie. His work has been covered by The Atlantic and kottke.org, and he has held research and engineering roles at HP Labs' Immersive Experience Lab, Brown University's Center for Digital Scholarship, and Eyebeam. He holds a BFA in Painting from RISD and a BA in Symbolic Systems, magna cum laude, from Brown University. Selected press & projects. His composite world-map drawing project was covered in The Atlantic (2014) and on kottke.org. World History, a book made from the project, was published in 2013. Research and installation work with Brown University's Center for Digital Scholarship, including an installation in the Rockefeller Library. Winter research residency at HP Labs' Immersive Experience Lab (2019). His volumetric found-footage work is discussed in Gabriel Menotti's "Volumetric Reconstructions of Found Footage" in Leonardo (MIT Press, 2020), and the world-map project was also covered by Glasstire. Selected exhibitions. Meet Me There, Martha's Contemporary, Austin (2025–26); To Weep Into Stones Are Fables, Cluley Projects, Dallas (2024); Horn Hoof Halo, Do Right Hall, Marfa (2023); Mirror Show, Spy Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Problem Gallery inaugural show, Marfa (2022); Restland, Marfa Studio of Arts, Marfa (2022); "401", Memorial Hall Gallery, Providence (2019); Brian Belott's People Pie Pool, Performa 17, Abrons Art Center, New York (2017); The Poetics of Verticality, Spektrum, Berlin (2017).full biography →