These pieces, are the result of work with common Mild Steel and Plain Carbon Steel. Controlling color, balance, composition, form became an obsession that consumed several years because steel is like an inebriated person. It acts like it just wants to sleep, but if you wake it up, you better have a plan to control it. It is unwieldy, unpredictable and recalcitrant.
The sheets of steel once prepped, stripped, layered, burned, waxed, and generally abused must be “fixed”, sealed, and prepped for macro photography and ultimately transferred onto sheets of acrylic glass, which get cured by UV light and mounted to a backer and frame. I keep the sheets of steel similar to how a photographer keeps negatives, hidden away from dust and light.
Most all of the pieces I create are commissions that go to corporate or private collections. I also work with a number of experimental process that include everything from Irish moss extract, medical equipment and acids to pressed hog hair filters. Clients tell me that this work is about “Innovation” to them. I do believe we are at our best when attempting to do what we are not certain can be done.
About Myself
Born: 1970
MBA University of Texas
Husband, Father, Artist
By 2008 I had worked with wood, pigments, drawing, painting and sculpture and these were all immensely enjoyable. Steel however, because it rendered all of my learned technical skills useless, drove me into a new relationship with Art. I then discovered that my great great grandfather worked in a metal foundry, my great grandfather owned a metal foundry in Ireland and my grandfather was a metallurgist for the U.S. Navy. Ironically, in pursuit of self-actualization, I was putting the pieces of my lineage together.
There is a tiny studio in my backyard where I nurture crazy ideas and artistic visions. Some of these take years of research and experimentation before circling back to the original goal, some never make it back. I am pulled by the unknown and believe we are at our best when success is uncertain and doubtful. My studio is equal parts laboratory, inventor’s garage and art studio. Its a stage to allow me to be in a deep, creative state where my time is best spent. When I am not creating, delivering, or talking about art, I am working as a member of a cognitive advisory team, overseeing a Canadian ISP, or playing with my children.
Process I am off-course 99% of the time. Maybe that is generous. This work is about continuous failure and continuous course correction. There are steps to this process: sourcing, prepping, burning, sealing etc. but within those neat organized sounding boxes are dark, fragile, unstable, operations that have left me infuriated, exasperated and defeated. Fortunately these are lessons about the irrelevance of failure.
Sourcing
Unlike canvass, steel is mined globally and so each sheet performs radically differently depending on where its elements were dug up and who produced it. It is very rare that the three qualities I am looking for, mill scale, surface characteristics and heat signatures, all happen on the same sheet. As a result, sourcing steel is a time consuming endeavor that has taken me through steel warehouses from Southern Texas to Northern Ontario.
I am an oddity in these massive warehouses mostly full of contractors and steel workers. In my local area they see me coming, and loudly whisper “here comes the looker”. The shop foreman will give me clearance to dig through the stacks and racks. With sky cranes, back hoes and massive steel guillotines they are grungy, noisy, unnerving places, I just try to stay out of the way as much as possible. When workers inevitably get curious I have tried to point out rare qualities in the steel but those moments end awkwardly as if I have overshared. I cut that out.
When the correct sheets are discovered, composition begins right there in the warehouse. Color, form, composition will be roughly laid out so the sheets can be cut down on site. This often is necessary just to get it back to the studio. It’s large, it’s filthy, it’s heavy and it’s meant to go on flatbeds driven by men of the same ilk. I choose to transport it myself in the back of an SUV next to child seats and design magazines so it requires forethought and preparation.
Prepping
Once back at the studio the steel begins a lengthy transformation process starting with sheet preparation. A lot of what most folks think artists do happens in this step. I will apply layers of wax, rubber and chemicals in a specific order that act as a controlling matrix similar to how topsoil controls rainwater as it passes to lower layers of rock. This control is key because unlike painting or pigments there is no correcting a stroke, the chemicals set off a chain reaction creating color or oxidation that can’t be reversed. Once the prep is complete, I take a deep breath and get to burning.
Burning
The majority, although not all, of the chemicals used are acids so this is essentially an etching process. Experience guides most of what happens during because often I can’t see what is happening on the surface of the steel due to wax or rubber layers. I have a general understanding of how each chemical is supposed to act but the unpredictable makeup of each sheet holds a mystery that only starts to unravel once the burning process has begun. During this stage I am often making adjustment after adjustment like a photographer dodging and burning in a dark room. The beauty of the burning stage is that much of it is out of my direct control. Unfortunately, the terror of the burning stage is that much of it is out of my direct control also. At some point I know I am done, like when you know a sentence needs a period, the statement is complete.
Stripping
Stripping is the moment of truth where I put an end to the chemical reactions and remove the obscuring layers. Ideally water would wash away the wax and the chemicals but water is worthless on melted wax and has a tendency to rust steel once it’s been chemically burned. Rubber on the other hand is great at removing solutions but has a tendency to wreck the delicate surface of the steel. In the end each issue has a solution, and if all went well I’ll be looking a most satisfying piece of work. At least half the time however there is a miscalculation and the sheet is lost. If the wax wasn’t thick enough or the steel too reactive or any one of a host of things can cause the sheet to completely oxidize. Those days require patience. A string of days like that require acceptance.
Sealing
The final step involves somehow glazing the surface… it could be with epoxy or lacquer or other clear sealant. This does a number of things but essentially keeps moisture and oxygen off the surface. Once they have been burned, the sheets are very delicate and even in a dark closet, if they are not sealed, slight humidity will cause rust to creep over them like mold on week old bread.
Final Steps
In the final steps, the pieces are cropped, photographed, and then printed onto glass. These are important steps that follow a very rigid process. When I first began, this process involved a large format camera with a lense the size of a salad plate. We would turn off the AC because the camera was sensitive to even the slightest breeze and the exposures are so long. The ipad sized negative then had to be shipped to another state where I had located a special type of scanner to scan the negative in super high resolution. This would then be sent back to complete the rest of the piece. This multi-state process involved way too many people, way too much time and money and was utterly fraught with quality control issues. I spent months hacking other options and ultimately settled on doing much of it myself with better technology….’if you want it done right….’ they say.
Forget purity. These pieces celebrate the beauty that arises when random elements become a permanent part of a renegade medium. A reminder that under pressure what some may call impurities are what help us endure and live our true colors.
Christopher Crane
Clarksville Austin