MM615 complete

Sculpture MM615535332245                                                                     Dimensions: 9"x9"x10"

When writing or talking about one of my sculptures, it is quite unusual that I will point to a specific image or circumstance that was a dominant influences for that particular piece. Outside of the technical constraints that guide my thinking, I do not often find myself faced with a singular image or object that moves me to make a piece of my own. If I do, I am usually not inclined to share for fear of creating undue context. 

Direct appropriation or imitative modes are not something I actively pursue, but this months work has a unique context that I would like to share. It is a bit of a winding story, but bare with me.

To preface, I have always been a very self-conscious maker; the well worn idea that art is primarily an outward expression, has always felt incomplete to me. This is because I personally see many parts of my work as an act of reflection, as a way to get to know my own mind and instincts a little better. Creating art for me has always been very inward looking, and to the same degree that a work might be an outward facing attempt to communicate, it is also a record of a mental state that can be studied.

When I find myself drawn to something, an object or work of art; I often find myself immediately questioning why that is the case. I find myself in a state of metacognition when ever I am inspired by something; watching myself, as much as I am watching the object of my interest. In short, I find myself frequently preoccupied with thoughts about what makes me tick, in the hopes that it will help me tick better in the future.

This goes a long way to explain why a geometrically quantifiable discipline such as machine work might seem so appealing to an artist like me. I have sometimes wondered if it might be used as a mechanism to try and tease out some basic metrics on my own taste. Even if it has yielded only mixed results, it remains a concept I revisit from time to time and is part of a larger search for tricks that might peel back the onion on my own mind.

In this particular instance, it seems to have been a random photo that yielded a useful piece of insight.

So here it is (above), the picture I have been leading up to. If I am not mistaken, it is an image of what remains of a Soviet experimental aircraft. I stumbled across this image some time ago and was captivated by it. I copied it to my desktop and just sort of looked at it off and on when I had time to sketch and think. 

Now, I am not particularly taken with aircraft design as a rule. From a formalistic perspective, I often find myself appreciating the intersecting compound curves in many aircraft designs, but I was not so sure that was the case here. I felt like this image was related to my work, but not in a formal way. It was more of a charisma thing, this old airplane was charming to me.

In time, this thought snow-balled into questions about how certain design motifs can arise in different design fields. How there is a "look" associated with any given category of objects, which includes air planes as a group. 

In some ways, what I am talking about is design convergence. When refrigerators first came on the market, they had wildly different looks and designs, but over time, those designs began to converge and now all refrigerators basically look the same, they have a "look", which is why we can say something looks like a fridge and everyone knows what we are talking about. This is true for cars, airplanes, vacuum cleaners,  and many other things. Each case of convergence tends to have a unique character that defines that objects persona.

Some of this is driven by necessity; as with aviation, aerodynamic properties drive much of the design work. Standardization also has a hand in it, and bringing down production cost can be a driver of convergence as well. 

But I also think some of it is cultural, driven not by physical constraints, but by the personalities of the people pursuing the technology. Motorcycle design comes to mind. Aside from two wheels and an engine, the sky is the limit for bikes, yet just a few dominant design motifs make up the vast majority of bikes on the road. The term "Classic Harley" is touted as an ideal and it is largely a result of the bike culture that grew up around that object. 

I may be oversimplifying this, but looking at the photo above got me thinking about this phenomenon of motifs. How creating a unique character for each of my works is something akin to what occurs in all manner of product design. With my work, each new piece has its own distinct "look", but the ideal is very similar.

It is no accident that all cars sort of look like angry faces flying down the road, and it is no accident that my sculpture work plays on that from time to time. And so with that in mind I sort of set about designing this piece. I wanted to give a nod to the character I felt the airplane image was projecting, while remaining true to what is essential in my own craft. 

 The usual influences are also there, but the image above played a big part in the final design of this work, and I thought it was an ideal window onto a part of my creative process that I usually find very difficult to articulate. 

 Technical Notes:  I employed some of the same "T slot" work I have been experimenting with lately. It was essential to solving this design and I am now using it much more elaborately. 

 I also brought back the use of the white powder coating you see as a finish for some of the parts. Many people have lamented over the years that I only used white powder with a single sculpture before abandoning it and moving on to other things. But it felt very appropriate here and so it has been unceremoniously returned to my pallet.

I am very pleased with the drawing as well, the composition just made good sense given the subject and I can't wait to get my hands on the physical print of this one. 

Unfortunately the image is so big (40"x36") that viewing them on the web does not do it justice. I design them to be interesting at multiple distances but at this scale you only really get the one. I hope all of you will get to chance to see them in person one day.

Build pics: Ok, I this image was a very early facing operation that illustrates very little, but I thought the reflection of the cutter as it was turning was just a nice image so I am indulging.

Cutting in the T slots on the body was a nail biter. There was very little distance between the ribbed elements on the body and where the T slots cut through the body, so if I was misaligned that would have been it for the piece. Fortunately, this part turned out near perfect. 

Another view of the T slots to show how they converged at the tail end. Again, making sure everything cleared was a critical design challenge this time. 

The powder coated parts fresh out of the oven. Looking at these, I don't know why I ever moved away from using this as a finish, but I am sure you will se more of it soon. 

As always, comments welcome. 

LP 553

My April started out with a bit of confusion as to what exactly I would turn to making next. I have many drawings going, none particularly finished, and I had originally planned to parlay my previous experiment with T slot compositions into a larger more intricate piece. However, my plans for that were quashed when all of my designs failed to come together in a manner I was fully comfortable with. 

But when complexity fails me and I start to feel a little stuck, I often return to "simple but elegant". It usually wins the day for me and was certainly the case this month when these three little sketches came tumbling out of my grey matter. 

Digital Schematics update

Not too long ago, I did a really fun interview with make magazine. In the article, I got to talk about my sculpture work, my experiments with 3D printing, and other digital aspects of my practice. I was also invited to give a little background on my blueprint drawings. From that experience, and because I have been preparing for an upcoming exhibition, I have found myself doing some additional writing on the topic of the schematics I produce. I have been reassessing their evolution over the years; how they have come from crude hand drafted pencil sketches to become highly refined pieces of digital draftsmanship. I have been thinking about my early approach to them, what they have represented to me along the way, and most importantly what purpose they now serve.

To start, I think it is obvious that drawings of some nature are necessary to flesh out my sculptural designs. To be successful at the highly technical process of machining metal, a large portion of the work must be extremely well planned. At a minimum, I must make drawings in some form in order to make my primary sculpture work. But as has been established, I have felt compelled from the very beginning to do more with them. My first layout for a machined sculpture was actually composed as an almost abstract geometric drawing.

When I was first getting into this kind of work, my instincts immediately led me away from treating my drafts as objects of mere utility. I was never comfortable with the idea of divorcing them from the conversation that I felt the finished work would go on to present. I always found myself wondering, if the sculptures were supposed to be the primary focus, then why was I giving so much attention to drafting detailed renderings of my work? I would spend hours meticulously laying out the lines on sketches which were never intended to be seen by anyone but me? I always had the nagging question in my head "If a sloppy unorganized drawing would suffice, why go further?" 

(See working sketch image below.)

V424

Introducing my newest machined metal sculpture, (#102 since we are now keeping count)

Its proper title is V424213333. 

 This newest work stands approximately 14" tall by 7"Diameter. It is my first major experiment using grey anodizing (I did do a small study first). I was pleased to see just how much the grey works to bring up the other colors in the work, more than I had expected it to.

This work is also made entirely out of aluminum (mostly Anodized) which is also a little uncommon, as I usually rely on different metals for my variety of colors.

The first conception of this work was actually as a hanging piece. I had done a hand full of sketches around the idea of using different process concepts, but applying them all to the same standardized shape. this design element was the only one that really stuck with me out of the whole bunch, but below is one of the sketches I worked from. (you can see a few more examples of some of the other ideas I was playing with).

 For this particular piece, I was thinking about ways to incorporate T slot grooving into a design, and to see what complexity would emerge from that relatively simple requirement. The others were also based off of unique design requirements of their own, but none of them were as promising in my eyes. 

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As is always the case, an idea tends to get flipped around and reimagined as it progresses. The vessel shape eventually came off the wall, and was turned on its head and fleshed out from there. 

The personality the piece took on once I had worked out the lower half really grabbed me. To my mind, the design alludes to a number of popular visual references (which I will abstain from listing), without really committing to any of them (I wish I knew a better way to say that). 

while rather large for a detachable base design, I went ahead with it anyway. It is rather heavy to be perched atop just 3 little divots in the base, but I think it sort of adds a little daring to the work. 

Sculpture 101, MV 714425525321621

Most of the smaller works I have been making lately have come in the form of small editions, or at the very least pairs, but this newest small work is a bonafide one of a kind.

 Before I began my next big project, I felt like I needed to indulge in something more modest in size. And because I think it is important to invite a little serendipity into your work every once in a while, (even for a process as highly regulated as mine) I thought maybe it was time to make something relatively more spontaneous than usual.

 For some time now, I have been staring at this pile of 3/8"x 1" brass bars I got from my metal supplier. Apparently, whoever cut these decided that it would be perfectly acceptable to cut them using a metal sheer instead of a saw. The result was that the ends of each bar were deformed (or rather mangled) by the sheering process. 

Needless to say, my supplier could not sell them this way, so I got them for a bargain. Not wanting to let them go to waste, I decided now was as good a time as any to figure out what to make with them, so with that in mind, I set about some quick sketching with the rule that these bars should be the centerpiece of my design.

As you can see, the results worked out pretty well. there are a few things I might do differently if I had to make it again (mostly technical, not visual) So it was a good experiment.

A rear shot. The whole thing fits more or less into a 3" Diameter sphere. 

100 Sculptures and counting (DQ 325..)

Todays blog post is a very special one for me, (and not because I am 25 years late in learning how to create gif animations) It is special because after 12 years toiling away in the shop, I get to show off my 100th machined metal sculpture. Everyone likes big round numbers, so today I am inclined to celebrate (if only a little)

I have made other types of sculptures before this 100th piece of course (see the secret archive here), but this body of work has become much more than I had anticipated, fueling over a decades worth of ideas and leading to things I could not have conceived of when I began. Along the way, it has also managed to tap into many contemporary trends in the arts and maker culture alike.

Had I known what I was getting into back in 2003 when I sold my motorcycle to raise the funds to buy my first milling machine, I might not have been so hesitant to trade in my wheels for my art, it was one of the best decisions I have ever made (right next to dropping out of art school and marrying my wife).

With that first piece of machinery, I started drilling and cutting metal for what would be my very first machined sculpture. I fell in love with the process shortly there after and have been building on those early experiments ever since. So todays new work is a bit of a mile stone for me, one that represents the culmination of over 16,000 hours* of shop, time turning metal into equal parts art and swarf.
(I keep pretty detailed records it seems).

*16000 hour estimate is shop time only, it excludes; sketching and rendering, research, machine building projects, maintenance, going to the hardware store, thinking while staring into space, tea drinking, pretending to listen to what your friends are saying at a bar or party while turning geometry over in your head attempting to figure out how on earth you are going to build the thing you just came up with on the ride to said bar or party, and finally... sleep sculpting.

Anyhow, here it is, number 100, and I couldn't have hoped for a better piece to mark the occasion. This design is a direct descendant of a piece I made last year, sculpture DK 522. That earlier work contained within it a disk shaped component that I was rather taken with as a stand alone object. A few other people commented on it as well, expressing that it would have made a nice sculpture all by itself. I took that to mean there was still more there to be explored and set about rethinking that particular component of the piece. 

Naturally that idea has evolved rather dramatically since that time. The first thing I did was to take the original disk shape and bend it inward into more of a cupped form, I kept the original spines that stuck out of it, but most everything else changed from there. As with all of my works, it took on a life of its own once lateral thinking kicked in.

Some shop footage of the disk shape being turned. I wanted this piece to be absolutely perfect, so I actually ended up making these disks twice. The first set came out technically ok, but I had accidentally cut them using an older version of the profile drawing I had created( a clerical error it seems), a problem created by working from multiple drafts. The result was that they were a bit thinner than I wanted the final shape to be, so I decided to remake them using the proper drawing. I am not yet sure what, if anything, I will do with the spare set.

Final Dimensions on this work are 17"x8"x7"

The blue prints for this one turned out wonderful as well, the web really does not do it much justice. Printed to scale, it will be 48" wide by 24" tall so much of the detail is lost. I am really looking forward to getting a full size version of this thing on the wall sometime very soon. 

GT 652231344421

In between the Holidays, I managed to find a little time to do some extra tinkering in the shop, Since I was between works, I decided to see if I could whip up something small in the short amount of time that I had available to me. Fresh off of my last piece, I decided to play around with some of the visual concepts from that particular sculpture.

So going for extra credit ( I had not planned on finishing anything else this year), I came up with this design, which for all intents and purposes is the little brother of EP631. A number of people had commented on the high polish detail from that previous piece and so I thought it might be a good exercise to single out that particular element for a small work like this. 

The design was tricky going at first, the sculpture consists of only three individual parts, all quite small, so it took about eight iterations to get it sketched out in way that I could reasonably expect to be able to build it. Looking back on it now it seems fairly simple, but I guess that is the hallmark of good design.

I did not bother with an elaborate blue print this time, just quick sketches (for me anyway) .  So here is the drawing I ended up with before beginning work. 

EP631222535444

Happy Holidays everyone. I am wrapping up the year by sharing this Charismatic pair of works. I wanted to get the images out so I will be brief this time around with the post.

Material wise, the one on the left has a stainless Steal Body and Base, while the one on the Right is in Bronze. 

They each stand a little under 6 inches tall, owing to the Bronze and Stainless used in this piece, they are quite heavy for their size as well. 

Some topside details.

As I often do, these works are designed with removable bases. 

NP625544312235

I have a couple of gems to show off this month everybody. 

It took me a little longer than I had anticipated to finish these because of reasons I will explain further down. But here they are, all shiny and new. 

Dimensions on these are 5.5" long and approximately 2.5" wide/deep.

Materials are a mixture of aluminum, stainless steel, bronze and copper.