Machined Metal Sculpture H411532221315

Title: H411532221315                                                      

Introducing my latest CNC machined aluminum and stainless steel creation.
Dimensions (9"x8"x8")

This work is another technical triumph for me, but given how visually compelling I feel the sculpture is, I think this time around I am going to let the images do most of the talking.

H 411 Technical Drawing Print (30"x27").

I took some very nice process shots this time around, I was actually shooting a lot of video for an upcoming exhibition at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture. The event will be held in the city of Shenzhen and will be my first exhibition in China (all very exciting developments).

I will announce more details about the video project and Shenzhen exhibition when things are further along, but for now, please enjoy the process shots.

Exhibition reminder

For those of you in the Baltimore area, please don't forget that I have an exhibition of my work opening at the BMA this week. The show opens on Wed September 16 and runs until Nov 15th.

The Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Dr, Baltimore, Maryland 21218

The 2014 and 2015 winners of the $25,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize present works that delight the senses and stimulate serious reflection. Some of their latest creations will be on view as well as pieces from their winning nominations, from www.BakerArtistAwards.org

Opening reception is Thursday Sept 17th from 6-8:30 PM
The event is free, and open to the public, but RSVP is required. Please rsvp to rsvp@baltimoreculture.org

As ever, comments are welcome

Br444265335 and Book Update

Title: Br444265335    (4"x2"x4")

Hello everyone, July was a busy month full of project planning, vacations, and yard work (who else grows pumpkins?!). But even so, I still managed plenty of time to get into the studio and bring these beauties into existence. 

Following on last months experiment with re-machining and powder coating, I decided to up the ante further and see if the powder coating was durable enough to survive the anodizing process. 

After a few tests and adjusting the temperatures on a few things, I was able to get really great results. 

This work also has some interesting mechanical features to how it is assembled which I will explain below.

The Br444 Print  (20"x18") Still really enjoying making these. 

The center rings for this piece were the most time consuming, I actually machined these entirely on my manual tools so I could take my time and make sure they came out perfect. It is sometimes more fun, and more accurate overall to do it this way, especially for small batch parts. 

These are the Cam Screws that hold each of the shaped pins in place. I just modified some stainless cap screws, mounting them eccentrically and machining the head into a cam shape.

Once mounted into the center ring, turning each of the screws provides a radial clamping force to secure each of the pins.

This is a funny little collet adapter I created to machine each of the pins. It was sort of a unique setup, normally you do not turn dowels in that direction. It worked rather well though. 

Again, I had never attempted to anodize parts that had been powder coated before. I always assumed the powder would never hold up to being exposed to several types of acid, being heated and cooled repeatedly, and the electro-chemical reaction of the anodizing process, but to my surprise it did.

It definitely adds a considerable amount of time to the fabrication of a part, and there is zero room for error as making a mistake means stripping the part and starting over, but it is a process that I think will be put to very good use in the future. 

Lastly, I just wanted to officially announce that my art book is now Being printed in its 4th edition. 

In preparation for a number of upcoming exhibitions, I have completely reworked much of the book, added lots of new material and shop photography, and brought it completely up to date with my portfolio of new works. For those of you who have enjoyed following my work over the years, I hope you might consider buying a copy to help support and share my work with others. Links below. 

Soft Cover:

http://www.blurb.com/b/6336915-chris-bathgate-sculpture-wor…

Hard Cover:

http://www.blurb.com/b/6337316-chris-bathgate-sculpture-wor…

As always, Comments are welcome.

RG355 and living with art(ists).

Sculpture RG355113224 (7"x2"x2")

After completing last months successful sculptural experiment, which saw the reintroduction of white powder coating in my work, I felt that maybe it was time to try another technique involving the use of powder coating. One that I had only previously experimented with. 

A few years back, I helped a friend prototype some parts for a commercial venture he was undertaking (for obvious reasons I cannot disclose what this is). during that process, I dabbled with using black powder coating and re-machining as a way to create an inlay look on machined parts.

It is a process most similar to the way I re-machine anodizing, but the powder has a very distinct look to it, and is only really workable on recesses of a certain size. Basically it behaves differently, so it did not seem like a redundant thing to try.

The original prototypes turned out quite well, but unfortunately my friends idea never fully panned out. So those experimental parts never saw the light of day. 

I often thought about that experiment, but for one reason or another, I never found the proper sculptural project to explore the black powder process further. Mostly I think this is because I have been so involved in using anodizing for various things. But these two little pieces were just the design I had been waiting for to try it out once again. 

These works feel a little more visually dense than what I usually make. Due to their small size and frequency of detail, they have a bit of an ornamental feel to them, hopefully without going too far...I think. 

Getting parts of this scale to fit well can be tricky when you have to tolerance for the relatively thick and unruly powder coating. When applied, the powders thickness can range anywhere from .001-.003 inches thick, this can change the diameter of a part by up to .006" (.152 mm for my metric friends). which is rather a lot when talking about machine work on this scale.

Despite these obstacles, everything turned out far better than I had hoped. These works are an interesting new development for sure. 

The weight difference between the two is quite noticeable, naturally the brass work on the left has more heft than the Aluminum one. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this months effort.

I felt it was about time for a nice vertical format drawing as well, very fitting for these works. 10" wide, 32" tall. 

Speaking of drawings, this month, I managed to get the prints made up for the last couple of pieces. With the help of my wife, we did some staging to take some great environment images of the works and prints together. She keeps a design blog for some of the renovations we have undertaken in our home over the years and has a much better eye for placing things in an actual space.

Whenever I am away from the studio for a couple of weeks, it is usually because the two of us are working on a big home renovation. Anyway, I am sure these images will look just as at home on her blog as they do here.

One interesting side effect of me being an exhibiting artist, is that the work we have around the house is always changing. Pieces we have on display will suddenly go off to be shown, or they will sell and we are suddenly left with a void to fill. Or, a bunch of works will suddenly return home from an exhibition that need multiple places to live for a while. 

And of course, new works are always popping up out of the shop so we are constantly rearranging things to display the art we have on hand in our living space. I suspect most people prefer their collections to be a little more stable, but It's always fun to try to keep up with it all.

 I hope you enjoy seeing the work in a different context for a change

As always, comments are welcome. 

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. 

Add caption

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.