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Its been two months and I am finally back from the shop with a new creation to share.

My second largish piece of the year, it measures 15.5"x 30" x 11" and weighs roughly 65 pounds.

As I often mention in my posts, I try to incorporate both engineering and creative concepts into each of my designs. It is really important to me that my works are in some small way grounded in something more concrete like an engineering challenge. I enjoy the constraints it imparts and it also gives me something tangible to talk about with the work. I find the aesthetic decisions I make for any given work are nearly impossible to articulate in a way that makes sense to other people, so its nice to have a side to the work that is less tricky to share.

 The catalyst for this piece came from the interlocking spoke assemblage you see below.

This assembly was conceived of while working on another project. At the time it did not fit with what I was doing, so I saved that idea, and used it as the technical foundation for designing this work. It took many tries to get this arrangement to both function properly and look interesting to me. But once I had resolved this element, the rest of the piece slowly took shape around it. 

Material wise, I've been really into using bronze lately, it machines well and is somewhat scratch resistant. I love its color and how it eventually turns a nice warm brown with a little age. It also goes really well with the aluminum and so the bulk of this sculpture is constructed out of either aluminum or bronze, with just a few small details made out of Stainless steel. The orange details in this work are anodized aluminum as well. 

Unable to find bronze tubing in the proper size, I was forced to make the large pieces in the legs out of solid bar stock, which contributes a great deal to the weight of this piece. 

The drawing this time around is a bit of an evolution over previous ones, as I have started to abandon the contained rectangular format. when laying this one out, I realized how unnecessary a rigid border was when trying to create something visually interesting, and so I intentionally broke through it in a few places with unexpectedly positive results. 

Now that this drawing has set a precedent, I have a lot of new ideas on where future drawings may be able to take this farther.

There are a lot more angles and images below, as well as process shots. So please enjoy. 

The actual finished blue line print.

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It has been a little while since my last post, spring brought with it a few home projects, trips, and art obligations that all conspired to slow things down in the shop for a little while. But with the distractions now out of the way and production getting back to normal, I am happy to post pictures of my newest work.

Dimensions on this piece are approximately 6.5"x6.5"x6.5"

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Hello everyone, Some news and new work. Here is my effort for April. It is a nice medium sized work made of Aluminum and bronze, it stands 8.75" tall by 7.625" wide and 6" deep at the base.

The main element for this piece was borrowed from a much older design that was giving me a lot of trouble. It just wasn't going anywhere, so I salvaged the useful elements and reworked it until I arrived at this rather unexpected ( for me anyway ) form. 

Drawing a design is always one thing, but building it is another thing entirely. This was a technically very complicated shape to create, I spent nearly as much time planning the process I would use to create the parts as I did actually making the parts themselves. 

People often ask me if CNC tools make complicated shapes easier to produce. I always answer "yes and no" and this piece is a great example of why I give that answer. The three main Aluminum elements in this design were complex to the point that there was no reasonable way to cut them without using a CNC machine. On the other hand, because they were geometrically complicated and at the same time, one of a kind, I could not trust any of my usual automated processes for generating the tool paths for the milling machine. 

The CADCAM programs I have work well for simpler parts, but because the work had to be rotated many times and had multiple overlapping facets, I had to create the tool paths the old fashioned way. And so I ended up spending two days checking geometry, plotting coordinates, and writing the entire G code program line by line, all by hand. It was a tedious task, and it was certainly by no means easy.

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This months Diptych is sort of a dovetail from last months edition of spherical works. Often when planning pieces I will arrive at a point where a decision can take the work in two very different directions. Usually, I can only choose one of those directions, but since I have been working smaller as of late, I decided to preserve some of those decision by allowing the work to split into a couple of different designs.

These are two sketches that diverged from last months project and then again from each other. I decided they were both worth building.

When approaching the blue prints for these pieces, It occurred to me that the small pieces by themselves presented too limited a number of parts to create anything interesting as far as a drawing composition, so I thought given the relationship of these three pieces, a composite print was both appropriate and also a nice challenge of its own. 

I abandoned a few of my older line making conventions for the boarder on this one and will probably continue to do so as I start experimenting more and more with the image making part of these prints, as apposed to the technical accuracy portion. 

The Dimensions on this pair are as follows, they each sweep out about a 4" Diameter circle and are about 2.75" top to bottom.

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It seems February has been a very productive month, so here I am once again with another set of works. This time it is an edition of three small sculptures, a format which I am quite fond of, and one that has yielded a seemingly never ending stream of inspiration to this particular sculptor. 

These are more or less 3"x3"x2" each, The bodies are solid stainless steel and the details are anodized aluminum in blue orange and red respectively..

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First piece of the New Year. This one had me busy for over 11 weeks and it feels good to have it finished and ready to share.

Dimensions on the new work are 23.5"H x24"L x12"D. It is machined entirely out of Aluminum and Stainless steel and weighs in just shy of 58 pounds. Blue print images, Process images and a shot for scale are toward the bottom.

I am going to be breaking with my normal posting format to try something new. I will be keeping this blog a bit more minimal as far as my writing goes, at least for now. I just want to let the images and the work do more of the talking for a while.  Obviously I would still love to hear your thoughts and talk to anyone who has questions one on one, but I felt my write ups were getting a bit too monotonous for my taste and I think simple is more desirable sometimes. (but feel free to email me anytime!)

(More images after the jump)

Precision: Process as Muse

In the short film, “Precision,” British filmmaker Nick Kennedy swiftly captures a small slice of Machinist Sculptor Chris Bathgate's labor-intensive process. Just as adroit as his subject, Kennedy has choreographed a gorgeous industrial symphony of Chris’ work, process, and aesthetic.

(The song is Bedtime Stories by Amon Tobin from the album ISAM and is available on iTunes here)

The new Documentary piece will also be screening at an exhibition opening this week in the Washington DC area .

The show is called “What’s Up: New Technologies in Art” at the Mansion at Strathmore. The show runs through March 2, 2014, and the opening reception is on January 17, 2014, from 7 to 9 p.m. Click the link for details and Directions. 

AR Edition complete

A great project to end the year!

Here is an update from a few weeks ago. I had talked about expanding my original AR645452222344 prototype into an edition using various metals and finishes, and now here we are with a completed six piece set. Each is an inverse pair using the three main red metals in my Pallet. 

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This little gem, and I do mean little (just 2 inches) was inspired by a visit from a friend of mine. This friend has always been quite taken with some of my smallest works, and during this particular visit, made it abundantly clear that he felt they were some of my most iconic pieces. Flattery will get you everywhere in life and so I was immediately moved to try and make a new small format piece. Not for him mind you, just for fun. I may expand this into a small edition as I think a bronze and copper version might be in order so please let me know if any of you might be interested in adopting one of them. ( the details on this one are Brass)

MX 535612252312412, Accompanied By An Essay On Sci-Fi Comparisons.

Here is the latest entry in my ever growing list of machined sculptural works. Depending on how you count things, this one is #87.

I thought I would end the year working on two major pieces. This piece split off from a design I am currently in the process of building. I began fabricating both of them at the same time as they have a lot of overlapping machining processes, but I was able to complete this one much sooner.

Usually when I post about a new sculpture, I tend to keep my comments very factual and technically oriented. I rarely stray into conceptual territory when talking about specific works because most of my ideas relate to the body of work as a whole, rather than being strictly pinned to any singular piece. I thought I would deviate from this for a change and touch some things I have been thinking about.

 I have been showing around early images of this piece, and as is sometimes the case, I have been getting a number of comments about how alien/sci-fi it looks to a few people. This does not necessarily bother me, and I certainly understand why this is sometimes the case. But I'd like to use this as an occasion to talk about this phenomenon, because depending on where you stand, this comparison can be problematic. Not just problematic for me as an artist, but for others who might see the work very differently.

 First of all, I should say that it has never been my intention to explicitly make anything that could be classified as art deco, sci-fi, steam punk, or ray gun gothic. Not that I see anything wrong with any of these genres, it is just not the direction that I come at this from. I am quite ok with the knowledge that many people relate to the work in this manner, but I go out of my way to present my work in a neutral way so as not to steer interpretation in any single direction. I am glad that it brings people pleasure to view my work, no matter the context they bring to it. 

But as I am sure many artist can relate, being categorized wholesale into one niche or another is never what one wants for their work. H.R Giger being the perennial example of an artist clearly marching to his own drummer, while for better or worse, cultivating a very large, Sci-fi centric following.  He no doubt would want to be remembered for more than just his role in creating a few creature features in the late seventies/early eighties.

 Part of the dilemma for me comes from wanting to make sure my art is judged on its own merits and isn't mischaracterized, but it is also the case that there persists a bias (in certain circles anyway) that from a fine art perspective, having your work labeled as steam punk or any of its counterparts, can be seen as a largely negative thing.

 The argument (correct or not) is based on the assumption that sci-fi themed work is derivative and implies some sort of creative laziness on the part of the artist. That it is either a contrivance with niche appeal or some otherwise less than noble exercise of the mind. Unfair as it may be, it is simply looked down upon by some as being a bit low brow and not to be taken seriously as fine art. 

I have a hard time with this, as there are no doubt plenty of examples that test this idea. Given the cultural overlap and genre mixing prevalent these days, I also suspect it would be near impossible to draw a distinct line between what does and does not fit this category in the first place. Assuming one of the criteria is that of the artists intent, whether or not I should concern myself with someone else's value system is arguable. However real the bias may be, I felt I should own the comparisons where they are justified, address were I think my work is unique and test the waters on what the impulse to default to sci-fi comparisons when discussing my work may really be about.