(welding torch buzzing) (machine whirring) (upbeat instrumental music) - I think of myself as a fabricator.

I am generally working from designs, almost always digitally designed on the computer.

And then I take those designs and I realize them in metal and wood, sometimes fabric, but that fabrication sort of encompasses all kind of new materials, cut to form and machined into your design.

I went into college studying music and classics and I was kind of all over the place.

And then a friend brought me into the sculpture studio and spent a few minutes teaching me welding, and I was kind of blown away.

I'd always been interested in art, but that kind of sealed the deal and I started taking classes right away.

- So how did you get to be so good to where you are today?

- I studied at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota.

After undergraduate study, I went on and lived in Minneapolis and San Francisco and worked as an artist assistant and also someone who kind of set up multimedia displays.

- And what would define a piece called a sculpture?

- Ha!

That is a good question.

You know, I think sculpture has expanded and contracted a lot over the years in terms of how it's defined.

I think that there really aren't rules or boundaries to it, because there isn't a specific material associated with it.

You know, traditionally bronze and wood and stone were big, but now it's literally everything.

And the more kind of creative you can get with like pulling unexpected materials in, the more likely you are to get attention.

So there's no boundary in terms of material.

Three dimensionality is a fairly core constituent to the way people think about sculpture.

I think it typically is something that prioritizes movement.

You know, it's sort of essential that you are active while you're experiencing it.

So that's how I think about sculpture, but a lot of different definitions.

- All right, let's do the elephant in the room.

- Yeah.

- What are you working on now?

- What am I working on?

This piece is intended for public display.

This is called "The Maintenance of Simplicity."

And this is a work that's gonna be about eight feet tall.

It's COR-TEN steel, so it's a weathering steel that won't corrode very fast.

And it's kind of inspired from industrial forms, kind of the industrial shoreline of Michigan.

Also, it's meant to kind of create a little bit of a furniture like matrices, that people can explore and try to figure out how to interact with.

So it's kind of a little abstract, a little representational.

- So where do you start, at the drawing board?

And then how do you put the pieces together?

- I do always start drawing.

Sometimes pen and paper.

I find that's the freest kind of space to think, once I really dial in what I think this thing is gonna be, I move to the computer, and then that's a really useful tool for composing really precise things.

This process involves creating patterns on the computer, cutting them from steel and then aligning them.

And there's... Because there's so many kind of intersecting pieces, there's really a small tolerance.

They have to be less than a millimeter apart.

So it becomes a puzzle piece that you kind of put together afterwards according to that pattern that you make on a computer.

So that's the kind of beginning process.

And then that gets you just to welding and grinding and that part of the execution.

These pieces come back from the laser cutter and they're... Kind of come back like this, I don't really have to clean 'em up very much, and then there's just kind of a process of assembly where I use magnets in an orientation like that.

And I'll line up the pieces like so, and I can get those edges, you know, if there's a 10th of a millimeter between them, that's a pretty big gap.

So I line 'em up like that, and then I can go in and put tack welds along that line.

These are just kind of example pieces, but this is a piece that's gonna end up on the sculpture.

I can weld an edge of that.

Now these are actually really easy welds because that corner, the way they line up, creates a natural kind of valley for the filler material.

So that part of it's not a huge struggle.

Okay, welding.

(welding torch buzzing) You should get a nice little bit of a shiny bead on the edge of that.

(machine whirring) (upbeat instrumental music) Bit of a fight.

So this is actually about 1/3rd of this finished piece.

So this has another two sections that kind of come out like this.

This mass in the center is the largest kind of single volume, but then there's these kind of more structural elements that... Little bit inspired from like the undersides of a dock or some kind of scaffolding, so.

This process came out of working with photography.

So for many years, I was making these kind of faceted small forms out of laminated photographs.

And those are quite thin, so I never had to think about material thickness, but they lined up edge to edge, and then I would join them together with an adhesive.

That translated very well to steel, except that there's a material thickness involved.

So now you have to draw the thing with a little bit of an eighth inch or 3/16ths of an inch punch out, which really will, after it telegraphs across the piece, really affect the shape of the piece a lot.

So this is derived from that photographic process, but adjusted for the material.

In terms of my pieces coming out of a digital design focus, I would say a hundred percent of my works go through that step.

Now wood, when I do woodworking, there's a lot more conversation with wood because it can kind of talk back, right?

It's got a lot of its own character and you've gotta work a little bit more flexibly with that.

So that process is different when I'm doing large scale wood stuff.

- Moments of bliss, finding your zen, does it happen?

- I think composition stage is your maximum energy time, right?

For me, when I'm figuring out how this thing is gonna be shaped, and that's real stressful, right?

That's real up and down and pulling your hair out, but finally kind of euphoric when you get there.

And then, you know, you send these things off to get cut and you come back and you've got a thousand pieces in front of you and you're like, "I just get to put this puzzle together for the next two months."

I think that's what I'm kind of most excited about.

It's like you've got lots of work ahead of you and you can just kind of dig into it.

And it sounds weird.

I feel the same way when I'm kind of grinding these things, that seems like the most tedious part of it, but when you're kind of grinding and cleaning, you're just in the moment.

You're just focused on that little part of the piece and you're not struggling mentally at all.

So sometimes that's a little moment of zen, yeah.

- When you have your professor hat on, what are your students learning?

- You know, it's always kind of two tracks that you're developing simultaneously.

I try to give them kind of conceptual puzzles or kind of ideas to explore their own direction.

And I usually pair that with some, just kind of technical offering, so that, you know, I don't really prioritize one or the other very heavily.

They kind of develop alongside each other.

You know, that gives them time to like work on their ideas.

I find that students need some weeks to figure out what they're trying to say and while they're doing that, they're learning cutting, welding, grinding, casting.

I think also, you know, a big part of teaching sculpture is, people realizing just kind of the inherent poetics of materials.

And people I think are often... Students are often surprised to realize that they kind of have a built-in sense of these materials 'cause they're encountering them every day.

But I think a student that can really put the kind of poetics of materials together in a way that tells stories within the work, and helps with their ideas, is a indicator of a sculptor.

- How is Kalamazoo as a backdrop for displaying art and having these opportunities?

- I mean, it's a really nice place to make.

I moved here from New York.

I'd lived in China and San Francisco for 10 years prior to that.

Always in really big cities.

And you know, those offer that kind of art scene that's bubbling all the time.

And that's awesome, but being an artist in that environment can be super challenging.

Having a space to make, moving stuff around, having your own time.

Kalamazoo's an awesome place to kind of step back a little bit and have that space to work.

Also, I mean there's a really rich art scene here, right?

There's a lot of depth to the creative community here.

So there's no shortage of other makers to kind of bounce your ideas off of.

- Your hands ever get tired?

- Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, I've taken my hands outta commission on pieces, so yeah, that's a fight too, but you move around, you adapt and find new ways to work.

- Nice job.

Congratulations on your work.

- Thank you.

(upbeat instrumental music)