The DoT Pocket Sculpture

Introducing The DoT Pocket Sculpture.

After my last post, which was admittedly a bit dense, I thought maybe a piece with a more off the cuff concept was in order.

The catalyst for this piece is a simple one, and it came just a few short weeks ago while at the opening for my exhibit at the National Museum of Industrial History. I found myself talking to a group of fellow machinists when one of them mentioned offhandedly that they thought that I primarily used only metal lathes in my work. 

Presumably they said this because of the predominance of turned features one can see throughout the show, but a further inspection would reveal that this comment couldn’t be true. Indeed milled and drilled features are to be found everywhere in my work and I use milling machines and metal lathes equally. I kindly corrected the gentleman and continued our pleasant conversation.

As I was driving home that evening, the comment about “only doing lathe work” popped back in my head and stuck with me in the days and weeks that followed. The idea of constraining myself to just one machine, one type of process (turning) reminded me of my early days discovering the ins and outs of machine work.

Early in my career as a machinist sculptor, I would build entire concepts around some of the most basic of machining principles. Out of sheer necessity, I was operating in an environment of constrained rudimentary techniques, but it proved to be a wellspring of inspiration for my work.

Despite my inexperience, I was able to make interesting works with quite a limited pallet of tools and processes at my disposal. The gentleman's comment gave me nostalgia for that somewhat simpler time in my evolution.

So I decided to use my encounter as an excuse to celebrate my beginnings and challenge myself to a highly constrained design. The rules were simple, I could only use turning operations to create the parts for the piece, and I would perform all of the work on one machine.

Somehow, I thought it would take me awhile to come up with a design, but history has a way of repeating itself. My mind seems to crave constraint. The ideas flooded in and I had a mature workable design within a week. The process was fast and loose and it all felt very much like a sketch. I was cutting metal only a day after conceiving the initial concept, which is a sharp contrast to some of my works, which can take years to flesh out and build.

I am calling this work The DoT. It is a double-offset turned piece, meaning that the work is turned along two distinct axis in order to create its form. And while this work manages to squeeze a lot of complexity and nuance out of a relatively simple premise, what I think is even more interesting is the contrast this draws with current trends within the machining community. 

Nowadays on social media, I find myself surrounded by examples of 5 and even 6 axis machining centers (incredible state of the art machines) being used to create what are often comparably simpler parts. I think it is fascinating that this work, as a piece of sculpture, can stand as an example of how detailed understanding of process can be coupled with creative design choices to make something quite complex, using merely 2 axis of machine motion. (compare 2 axis machining with 5 or 6 axis of motion that is). That is fascinating regardless of whether you think it is good art.

This work fits perfectly into my series of small pocket sized sculptures and feels rather wonderful in the hand. While it is a little larger than a typical worry-stone, it makes great sense as a tactile pocket sized piece of art. There are no mechanics in this work however, I want this piece to be exactly what it is, a great excuse to carry around a little piece of sculpture. It is a piece with gobs of implied functionality and purpose, so it need not actually have any.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Since this piece is relatively straight forward in terms of its process steps, I took the time to fully document the machining process and also give some commentary and machining notes along the way. I think pulling back the curtain on my process is the only way to help you appreciate my process in the same way I do, so this is likely going to become more common going forward. 

After showing around some advanced images of this piece, the consensus seems to be that if I didn’t do a release of these small pieces, there might be a small revolt among my more ambitious collectors. Luckily there is no reason for concern, because I feel the same way, that a small edition of DoT’s is more than appropriate.

So to the details of the impending pre-order. 

I will open a signup on Thursday February 13th. It will be an open sign up with first come first serve rules in play. While I have not set a maximum quantity for the release, I will close the sign up if I feel that demand is outstripping my ability to make these in a reasonable time frame (I try to keep most projects within a three month window to leave room for new work and ideas). Otherwise, I will leave the sign up open through the weekend and close pre-order on Monday morning (Feb 17th) at 8AM.

I will send out a newsletter (for those on my email list) as well as put up a new post here at the beginning of the pre-order. Both will contain the link to the sign up form. 

Additional details and pricing will be contained within the sign up form (I do not post prices on publicly facing media).

Thank you all again for following along and, as always, comments and questions are welcome.

Sculptural Knife Vase

The Sculptural Knife Vase

I have been teasing for many months that I have been working on a knife project.... What kind of knife project?... Why, a flower vase of course! A machined metal flower vase with fifteen razor-sharp hardened steel blades that encircle its precious blooming cargo.

(Actually dried flowers in this case, it is winter after all)

This may seem like an odd combination, maybe even a tad tongue in cheek, however this piece has been in development for several years and embodies many of the themes I have been laying out over the last few projects. It connects a number of conceptual threads in my work, and does so in ways that were unexpected even to me.

So please tuck in for a long read (if you are inclined) and I will do my best to explain.

Preface

I have spent a lot of time thinking about traditional craft-forms within various studio art movements. Practices such as glasswork, woodturning, and ceramics are all crafts that got their start on a factory floor a lot like machine-work. However these crafts differ from machining in a few important ways.

Unlike machining, each of the above craft movements represents a process that has largely fallen out of industrial use. They have since been picked up by artisans and have been turned towards more creative ends. Likewise, these crafts have signature shapes and forms that are common within their trade (Vases, bowls, urns etc). They are shapes that tell that crafts particular history. Most of these forms are used to learn their respective practices and have become inseparable from that crafts visual language.

These craft-forms are of interest to me because while machining is a craft that shares a similar industrial past, there are few signature forms one can point to that uniquely representative it as a medium. The machinist landscape seems to lack ubiquitous forms that fall neatly into the same paradigm of craft and craft-form. One likely reason is that machine-work is a sprawling discipline full of specialized skills. The range of tools and processes at play are so varied it is nearly impossible to find projects that are analogous to what one finds in a woodturning class or glass blowing studio.

Because of this absence of unique craft-forms within the world of machined metal, I have spent considerable time exploring what a “machined craft-form” might be. Should machining eventually find better standing as a sculptural medium, what forms might come to define it?

I undertook a wide variety of projects to explore this, including hand-held kinetic art projects, a machined vessel series, and even a few collaborations with other makers and machinists. These projects drew inspiration from many of the industrial crafts listed above, as well as trends within the contemporary machinist community, and even ancient craft-forms such as Japanese Netsuke and Chinese snuff bottles.

Over that time, I have become captured by the idea of borrowing forms from older crafts and reworking them into highly engineered machined craft-forms of my very own. And while it may seem counterintuitive to use a contemporary and technologically advanced process to revisit forms from bygone industrial eras, it is important to remember that every craft, no matter how old, was cutting edge technology at some point in time.

The impulse to formally explore technology transcends vintage and it has become a lively and fruitful line of thinking for my work. This new project is the next step along that journey and takes the idea of borrowing, reimagining, and remixing traditional craft-forms to new places.

The Sharp Arts

Now with all of that said, there is one particular craft tradition that up until now, I had been avoiding. I am of course referring to the world of contemporary knife making (both decorative and utilitarian).

Knife making is a discipline that perfectly captures the dichotomy between historical and contemporary industrial processes. Much in the way that I am exploring older traditions with machine tools, it is a field that mixes historic and modern methods rather elegantly. Knife making is a rare craft, in that it maintains working first hand knowledge of nearly every technological step of its long history. Its roots go all the way back to the Stone Age, and it has evolved and changed with each technological epoch along the way.

The history of the knife is the history of mans material progress. Like machine-work, it embodies a wide spectrum of metalworking processes. One can find countless practitioners still putting hammer to anvil in a way that is thousands of years old. And while its historical traditions are alive and well, the world of knife making has also been completely transformed by the adoption of modern machine tools and new technology.

Knife making’s influence on the creative culture of machine-work is undeniable. It has a long decorative arts tradition that has only grown with the adoption of digital fabrication technology. As a metal sculptor who is involved in the ways process can inform the aesthetic elements of a craft, knife making is beyond fascinating to me.

While I have resisted taking up knife making directly, preferring instead to keep my attention firmly on sculpture, I am drawn to it as a source of inspiration.

The Sculpture Connection

While various knife makers have inspired my work, I found it difficult to approach the craft directly through my work. My process typically involves stripping away the utility from various design or craft concepts to better reveal what is aesthetically interesting about them. I felt that it might be impossible to strip the utility from a knife and still have an object that is both interesting and spoke meaningfully to the craft.

It finally occurred to me that it isn’t necessary to fully strip the utility from a knife to appreciate its inherent aesthetic qualities; one can simply put those qualities into a unique context. My previous projects involving historical craft-forms have (oddly enough) provided me a conceptual bridge of sorts. They have supplied me with the necessary framework tell a story about material progress and blade making at the same time.

The project

Creating this rather distinct (if impractical) flower vase might seem an odd way to explore knife making, but I felt the best approach was to use the blades as sculptural elements in a way that created an unexpected context for them. Rather than stand alone objects, I felt it more interesting to contrast the blades with some of the other craft-forms I have already been exploring. I wanted to use my foray into blade making to further tell the story of how various industrial crafts come to be appropriated for the purpose of making art. 

So while it may seem counter productive to make a flower vase out of machined knives, that is strangely enough, exactly what I have done, and not without reason.

This work is a good example of combining two relatively simple ideas (making a vase and making a knife) to create a situation that impedes the usefulness of both. What remains is an object that mischievously demands that it be appreciated for more than its precarious utility.

Now there may be some of you out there who are put off by the idea of exploring weapons of any kind as art, but I think this piece easily demonstrates that knives can be many things besides that. I myself am not entirely sure what all the implications of using blades as sculptural elements might be. But to those who would be critical, I ask that you maintain an open mind, and acknowledge that more often than not, knives are tools like any other.

There is beauty (and humor) to be found in even the most tactical aesthetics within the creative industrial arts, so while it is easy to judge, it is far more interesting to explore, and it is my intention to do the latter.

Technical Notes:

Since I was keeping this work kind of a secret, I was not able to share process photos in real time like I have become accustom, so below is breakdown of some of the challenges I faced as well as some of the documentation I made along the way.  Again, a bit of a read, but for those interested in the nuts and bolts of the project, it should be interesting.

While my preference is to introduce new techniques one at a time, tackling knife making made that approach quite impossible. I was in over my head in too many ways to count, which was refreshing and disorienting at the same time. I had never made a knife blade before (not on purpose anyway), so there is rather a lot to touch on here.

Machining the blades:

There are several common ways to make knife blades, some are forged (think hammer and anvil), some start with pre-made bar stock and go straight to the grinder to create the shape, and still others machine the majority of the geometry and then go to finishing operations. In my case, I obviously wanted to machine the blades, but this is not as straightforward as it first seems.

For starters, I had never machined high performance knife steels before. Knife steels are much harder than the alloys I typically select. They are unforgiving to machine, so set-ups and machining parameters need to be much more carefully applied. Choosing an appropriate alloy was daunting, but after a lot of research, I settled on a steel called AEBL. Like all knife steels, it has pros and cons for use as knife steel.

The pro: AEBL is used in a lot of kitchen cutlery, so it is pretty common and easy to source. It has great corrosion resistance and is known to be relatively easy to harden and sharpen. It is also reasonably inexpensive, which is important for an experiment with so many blades in it. Exotic knife steels can get extremely pricy, and there was no need to be unnecessarily spendy when good options abound.

The con: Surprisingly, there was not a lot of information on machining AEBL. I had a hard time getting recommendations on cutting parameters. I came to learn this is because AEBL is primarily used in making large quantity commercial blades. It is more commonly cut with abrasives processes like water jet cutters or lasers, and then ground to final shape. That didn’t mean it was un-machine-able, it just meant that that it wasn’t common, so information was scarce. I did eventually get some useful guidance from a fellow knife maker to use as a starting point.

Overall: Once work got underway, I found that AEBL wasn’t horrible to machine, even on the modest tools that I have, the finish was actually pretty good. But, while the machines handled it well enough, I had to take my time and not push things. I found that AEBL has some abrasive properties to it that wore the end mills faster than anticipated.

Since I had to make 15 blades (plus some spares) for the project, I burned through more $25 cutters than I care to admit. Some of this premature wear could have been mitigated with a more rigid and balanced tooling set up, but I soldiered through, took my time, and ended up with pretty great results.

Below is also a video showing some of the fixture-ing and the warping issues I also encountered.

Heat-treating and Hardening steel:

Another process I had little experience with was heat-treating and hardening steel. While this is something that toolmakers and machine designers are quite familiar, as a sculptor, it just isn’t something I had much of a need for, until now.

Heat-treating is fascinating for many reasons; chief among them is that it makes much of the metal work I do possible. At its simplest, machining is simply using a harder material, to cut a slightly softer one. When milling brass with steel, this can seem a simple mater of material selection. But when cutting one kind of steel, with a similar kind of steel, things start to get technically interesting and down right philosophical.

This is grossly oversimplified, but think of it this way, the main factor in determining steel’s hardness is its carbon content, and how those carbon atoms are arranged within the metal. Heat-treating is how one arranges the atoms to create the hardness one desires. Cutters and blades only need to be slightly harder than the material they intend to cut. So it is entirely possible to take two pieces of the same alloy, heat-treat one to make it hard, and then treat the other so that it is soft. From there you can easily shape and cut one with the other, sort of like cutting warm softened butter with a harder piece of frozen butter. That’s fascinating stuff.

So long story short, in order to harden my knife blades so they would take a nice edge, I had to invest in a special kiln to heat-treat them. From there I was able to crash coarse my way through this fascinating process and achieved good results. Having a way to harden metal also opens a lot of doors for interesting future projects.

Sharpening steel:

While I have been shaping metal for decades, I had never intentionally drawn a razor sharp edge onto a piece of metal for the purposes of making art. I have sharpened cutlery in a utilitarian context, but never in a way that was careful of the geometry and polish of the steel. Sharpening blades with precision was another skill I would have to hone (get it).

There are seasoned knife makers who have perfected their sharpening technique over many years, and over thousands of knives. Some can draw an edge onto a blade standing at a manual grinder in just a few minutes using some hard earned muscle memory. I however, do not have this skill (yet!) so despite my long career in metalworking; I had to compensate for inexperience with the use of a sharpening fixture.

I settled for hand sharpening each blade on a relatively slow, but tried and true, knife sharpening jig. It produced great results, but was time consuming. It is something that will likely change but slow and steady was the way to go here.

Assembly and composition:

The overall design of the Vase is an area with which I was much more comfortable.

All of my sculptures are built around some novel assembly method or engineering concept that I can express in a visually interesting way, and this work is no exception.

Each blade has a T shaped spine that engages with a comparable slot along the length of the vessel body. The blades are secured by a couple of tiny setscrews that engage the spine and provide a clamping force for the blades in each slot.

The screws are accessed from the opposite side of the vessel, by reaching through the work from the decorative pin holes exactly opposite the lock screw. From there, the rest of the assembly was pretty straight forward, I used the decorative pin holes as additional locking set screws for the stainless steel liner of the vase.

I made a short video to demonstrate the concept.  (below)

As you can see in the video, I also made some fun devices for moving the work without having to touch the blades, something that needed quite a bit of extra consideration. Getting this thing into place without hurting yourself or others is actually pretty tricky. 

Anyhow, thanks for reading. 

As always, questions and comments are quite welcome. 

Machined Metal Ampoule, or the AMP for short.

Introducing the fourth installment of a growing series of mechanical vessel sculptures. As I continue to explore various aspects of modern machine work as a fine art craft, I have found that one line of inquiry in particular continues to occupy a disproportionate share of my attention. 

More specifically, I am talking about my projects that involve examining the traditional craft forms of other industrial mediums (wood turning, knife making, glass work, ceramics etc) through the lens of my own craft (machining). It is quickly becoming an obsession of mine and has helped me better understand the ways in which my process is becoming more widely adopted as a sculptural medium. It has proven personally fruitful for me as a sculptor as well. 

Following on the heels of the SMV3, which was one of the larger and more complex editions I have made to date, I was craving something a bit simpler and minimal to approach next. An ampoule seemed to fit the bill perfectly. 

While the term "ampoule" has a more formal definition and is commonly understood as a small, sealed glass cylinder or medical implement, anyone who has dabble in any sort of fictional or fantasy nomenclature (or even the world of perfume) knows the word “ampoule” has been used more liberally with a much wider range of variation of forms and contexts.

With this project, I went with a bit broader interpretation when deciding what an object like this might be. The result is a sculptural object that is, from a mechanical perspective, a bit less flashy than some of my other vessels. But just like the others, it excels at being a striking aesthetic object. 

It was also an opportunity to combine some of my previous research on Chinese snuff bottles with some of the defining elements of what an ampoule might be. There is a surprising amount of overlap between the two objects. 

As I mentioned already, the mechanical functionality of this work is rather simple when compared to its predecessors, but it is no less interesting from a design perspective. 

I wanted this vessel to be truly air and water tight, and while achieving that is not really all that difficult, making something that seals well and is also pleasing to look at while having interesting functionality often is. 

Balancing all of those things in this work, as well as previous ones, has taught me so much more about making formal sculpture than I ever anticipated, which is why I continue to pursue these projects. My appreciation for the overlapping spheres of craft, design, and art continues to grow with each new edition.

On the technical side, the lid and container parts have a geometry that neatly fits each other much like a keyed shaft. The turned features, before being milled, are sized such that the two halves would never fit together. It is only by selective removing material from the lid, and creating slots in the vessel, that they are able to slide together, seating a spring loaded plunger, that floats inside of the lid, onto a tapered opening in the lower vessel.

Once the plunger seats, the lid can be rotated into a position where it can use the spring tension to lift back up and hook into a series of notches in the vessel.

The work is a little large for an ampoule (3.75"x1.5"D) but I wanted it to be a scale that fits well in the hand, as well as have some useful space inside. It can still easily be pocketed if you are brave enough to do so. 

Some of you will rightly look at this design and point out that it does not stand on its own. Something that might be problematic if you actually wanted to use it for some purpose. You wouldn’t be wrong.

One of the things that appealed to me about many glass ampoules, is that they are sealed single use type objects, and so they don’t really need to stand. They are often just dispensed from a box or holder of some sort. As a sculptor who often struggles with that pesky interface between the real world, gravity, and my creative ideas, I felt this was a great excuse to make an object that while utilitarian, was free of the constraint of needing to stand on its own. 

It is an allusion to the object that inspired it, but it also helps reinforce that it is an object meant to be appreciated for its aesthetics ahead of its functionality. 

That being said, while I have never really liked making overt stands for my work, and I try where I can to make work that does not require them, in the end, I did have to make a small concession. I realized people might want (or need) this piece to stand in certain contexts, in order to put it to some real use. So I made a no frills accessory stand out of Delrin for the Ampoule to rest in. 

The stand is purely functional, and I don’t really consider it part of the actual work, but for practical reasons, I knew I needed to include it. So while it won't appear in any of the official photos, I plan to provide these to all of you who want to add one to your collection. 

I would also encourage anyone who is game to design, turn, or 3D print something of their own. I think their is a lot of room to get very elaborate with something like that, however, I wanted to remain focused on the actual object for the time being. 

Which brings me to the portion of this post reserved for the collectors among you. 

Like all of the objects in this series, an edition is certainly going to be on offer very shortly. 

The AMP will be a bit more affordable than the last few projects. So while it is a nice contrast to previous vessel pieces, hopefully it also opens the door a little wider to some of you collectors who have found yourselves priced out as of late. Affordability is a relative term, but those of you have been following along probably know what to expect from a piece like this. 

I have a bit more work to do to finalize the pricing, but details for a sign up and a link will be posted at the end of the week. (lets say November 8th) 

So look for a second update very soon. 

As always, comments and questions are welcome. 

Final thoughts on the SMV3 Project.

 

Bringing the SMV3 project to a close.

The SMV3 project is now complete, so it is time to take stock and reflect a little. The best way to do that in my opinion, is to allow a little time to tinker a bit at the end. Like all of my edition projects, it just wouldn't be right to bring such an interesting sculptural concept to a close without having a bit of fun with color using some of the spare parts from production.

There are always a few spare parts, but in this case, the production run for the SMV3 went so smoothly, and I scrapped so very few parts, I had more than plenty on hand to experiment with and I ended up with an additional "four" one of a kind works.

I had always planned to do one or two of these, so I strategically worked in a few aluminum parts so I could experiment with anodizing when the time came to make this little encore. 

My only regret is that I wish I had opportunity to expand on this a little further, but I know it is time to move on. I need to get to one of the many other ideas I have waiting for me, as they all deserve their day in the sun. 

So what you see, is all that will ever be. Any further concepts will just have to carry over and find expression somewhere else, which is never a bad thing.

So, if you missed out on the original limited release, or just want to add another jewel to your collection, I will be putting these up for collection so they can go to good homes. 

To that end, I have opened an unannounced sign up sale sheet at the link below.

Link here

I will leave it open until the beginning of next week (list will close at 9AM Oct 21) Terms of the sale and price are on the sheet. 

Thanks again to everyone who followed along and contributed thoughts and comments along the way. I appreciate hearing from you all. 

We will see you on the next project. And as always, thoughts and comments are welcome. 

New book Release

New Art Book! New Art Book! New Art Book! 

As part of my upcoming exhibition at the National Museum of Industrial History (opening this January) I have been preparing a comprehensive re-issue of my Artist book. It has been nearly three years since it was last updated, so there was gobs of new work to include.

This new soft cover edition is a whopping 264 pages of machined art goodness. It includes a comprehensive chapter dedicated to all of my kinetic and pocket art projects to date. This new section has been handled with extra care, with plenty of exposition to ensure that each kinetic art project retains the necessary context to be appreciated as a bridge between the worlds of fine art, craft, and design.

Unlike previous releases of my book, which were issued through Blurb. This time I am finally (finally!) getting this done the right way. I have partnered with a very enthusiastic local printer to make sure that the print quality is exactly what I want and far superior to anything that has come before it. And because I am getting a sizable print run, the price will be far more affordable than previous printings (just $25 each). 

While there will of course be copies on hand at my show this coming January, if any of you want to get your hands on a advanced copy now, I am starting a sign up for early release now. 

Link to buy your early copy

I will be signing and numbering each of these advanced copies just to make them a bit more special than what the general release will be.

This book has been an ongoing project of mine, and I appreciate all of you for following what I do, it has meant everything to my work and to me, so thank you. 

And as always, comments and questions are welcome.