The Fusion of Art and Technology: The Evolution of Sheet Metal Sculptures+ View more
The Fusion of Art and Technology: The Evolution of Sheet Metal Sculptures
+ View more
Date:2024-01-04 11:10
Art is always changing, and in the sculpture world, the newest trend is towards an excellent working method: sheet metal. Using sheet metal to produce sculpture is certainly not new. However, this relatively inexpensive and accessible material now allows sculptors to achieve an intricate melding of form and function. And it is not just that, the sculptors’ choice of material—types of sheet metal and alloy—has become part of their artistic vocabulary. When distinguishing modern sculpture from the old, one can point to changes in both form and material. Contemporary sculptors think quite seriously about what they want their chosen medium to say.
Once upon a time, sculpture was the province of the individual artist, who painstakingly worked in three dimensions. Now computers and machinery do much of the work, allowing for newer forms of precision and enabling artists to achieve their visions. A sculptor starts the process by using CAD (Computer-Aided Design), designing a model that is translated into code used by a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine. The machine then cuts and molds the sheet metal into the exact shapes desired. The artist's original vision is realized down to the last curve and angle.
After cutting, sheet metal undergoes the processes of bending and folding to become the finished art object. Specialized tools and equipment allow for the formation of complex, even curvilinear, shapes and three-dimensional forms that challenge and defy the traditional sculpture. Next comes the art of welding, which (like riveting) is often left visible in the finished sculpture. For many metal artists today, and particularly for Hammersley, it is the skillful assembly of the parts that makes for the kind of complete and captivating works that one sees in a gallery or museum.
Surface treatment is the last step in creating a sheet metal sculpture. What is done at this stage can make a big difference in the way the finished piece looks and lasts. In fact, surface treatment is to sculpture what paint is to drawing. The main options available to artists include grits and grinders, sprays and paints, with the end goal often being an even, reflective surface that invites the viewer to see something in it that isn't there in the art itself. And that's a big part of the deal: the surface serves as a gateway leading into the piece.
Sheet metal art holds unlimited possibilities for future innovation, but there is something very much like tradition in the ways the artists create their work—each piece is made by hand or is CNC [computer numerically controlled] tooled, with little in between. Even though the techniques are time-honored, the tools now available to the artist make an almost unlikely marriage of tradition and technology, with which the exhibited works play with and straddle both realms.
It is critically important during this technological renaissance to preserve the fundamentals of artistic creation: the artist's vision and inspiration. No matter how sophisticated the tools of artistic expression become, it is the artist—not the scientist or the engineer—who galvanizes the inanimate expression of art into something that pulses with the essence of "life." For it is the artist who will make life's work out of the sculptor's "cold metal," the animator's pristine computer code, or the architect's modern concrete; and working artists will be our best bet toward ensuring that those tools are used in a fashion that remains, fundamentally, an artistic one.
To wrap things up, there is profound development in art and technology converging on the working of sheet metal—sculpture making, if you will. This isn't so much a trend as a watershed moment—a Rennaissance if you prefer to call it that—where all the things an artist can achieve with a vision, anyway, aren't just happening as some temporary show's worth of public spectacle but are increasingly being accomplished in the surging metal that sheet metal working can, in capable hands, realize—all without the wild hand of a welding torch in the artist's hand and to what has thus far been mostly a seen-not-experienced basis.
Once upon a time, sculpture was the province of the individual artist, who painstakingly worked in three dimensions. Now computers and machinery do much of the work, allowing for newer forms of precision and enabling artists to achieve their visions. A sculptor starts the process by using CAD (Computer-Aided Design), designing a model that is translated into code used by a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine. The machine then cuts and molds the sheet metal into the exact shapes desired. The artist's original vision is realized down to the last curve and angle.
After cutting, sheet metal undergoes the processes of bending and folding to become the finished art object. Specialized tools and equipment allow for the formation of complex, even curvilinear, shapes and three-dimensional forms that challenge and defy the traditional sculpture. Next comes the art of welding, which (like riveting) is often left visible in the finished sculpture. For many metal artists today, and particularly for Hammersley, it is the skillful assembly of the parts that makes for the kind of complete and captivating works that one sees in a gallery or museum.
Surface treatment is the last step in creating a sheet metal sculpture. What is done at this stage can make a big difference in the way the finished piece looks and lasts. In fact, surface treatment is to sculpture what paint is to drawing. The main options available to artists include grits and grinders, sprays and paints, with the end goal often being an even, reflective surface that invites the viewer to see something in it that isn't there in the art itself. And that's a big part of the deal: the surface serves as a gateway leading into the piece.
Sheet metal art holds unlimited possibilities for future innovation, but there is something very much like tradition in the ways the artists create their work—each piece is made by hand or is CNC [computer numerically controlled] tooled, with little in between. Even though the techniques are time-honored, the tools now available to the artist make an almost unlikely marriage of tradition and technology, with which the exhibited works play with and straddle both realms.
It is critically important during this technological renaissance to preserve the fundamentals of artistic creation: the artist's vision and inspiration. No matter how sophisticated the tools of artistic expression become, it is the artist—not the scientist or the engineer—who galvanizes the inanimate expression of art into something that pulses with the essence of "life." For it is the artist who will make life's work out of the sculptor's "cold metal," the animator's pristine computer code, or the architect's modern concrete; and working artists will be our best bet toward ensuring that those tools are used in a fashion that remains, fundamentally, an artistic one.
To wrap things up, there is profound development in art and technology converging on the working of sheet metal—sculpture making, if you will. This isn't so much a trend as a watershed moment—a Rennaissance if you prefer to call it that—where all the things an artist can achieve with a vision, anyway, aren't just happening as some temporary show's worth of public spectacle but are increasingly being accomplished in the surging metal that sheet metal working can, in capable hands, realize—all without the wild hand of a welding torch in the artist's hand and to what has thus far been mostly a seen-not-experienced basis.
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