Machinist/sculptor Christ Bathgate (previously) can't keep up with demand for his latest "pocket sculpture," a kinetic piece that's designed to be soothing to fidget with.
Bathgate's not sure he can go into production with his labor-intensive pieces, but I think there's good reason to believe that there's a real market for thoughtful, beautiful fidget-pieces (think of the $5.3M+ raised for Matthew and Mark McLachlan's Fidget Cube Kickstarter).
And, of course, I'm hoping he makes more of these because I want one with the white-hot blaze of a thousand suns.
As a person who comes at machine work purely from a fine art perspective, I wanted to attempt to bridge the gap a little between the idea of making craft objects such as knives, rings, tops, tactical gear etc, and the idea of making art objects for their own sake.
One of my goals with all of my work is to try and move the needle for a few of the makers and metal crafts people I have come to admire. People who are doing some amazing things with aesthetics in their given vocations, and maybe just raise the idea that there is fine-art in what they are doing with machine tools within their trade, and maybe encourage others to turn their talents to the arts, and to sculpture.
Not because what they are doing is not already amazing, but just because…."art". (make sense?)
Pocket sculpture update [Chris Bathgate]
