Drawing Machine | Chad Curtis

For approximately the past year, I have been making drawings using a home-brewed CNC-based drawing machine, as a studio-based tool, fashioned primarily of components from the local big-box store. After using this tool for a number of months and finding myself still enamored with the mechanical motion of the machine, I designed a wall-hung version, capable of functioning during exhibitions, to draw directly on the gallery wall with a standard, mechanical graphite pencil. The images presented here represent the first version of the drawing machine.Beyond the desire to bring to the tool to the exhibition space as a kinetic and performative work, the exhibitive version of the drawing machine retains the tension between high and low-tech, exposing the banality of its components aside the precision of the digital electronics. The nuance of the machine resides in this tension, offering an accessibility to the viewer through this duality, the digital and analog, that reflects the current state of contemporary life. This accessibility, further enhanced by the tactility of the images, challenges the assumptions of both digital processes and of the handmade, residing somewhere in between and less easily categorized.

While there is, in certain individuals, an apprehension surrounding digital technology and the loss for the handmade, there resides another option. I have chosen to undermine the system and make handmade, digital tools. When the digital is no longer viewed as an unknown foreign entity, impenetrable in its logic, it becomes raw material, like any other material, and the boundaries grow into something much less clear.

golden_eagle_background

For the past eighteen months, or so, I have been working with home-brewed CNC-based plotting and milling machines. The milling process has made its way into the work through pink insulating foam in a number of pieces, which can be viewed in the current work section of the website. Initially, the plotter was simply a means to test the progress of the milling machine during the building and design stages, but I recognized it for what it was: a great opportunity to address drawing in my work that is consistent with my process and, more importantly, the conceptual interests in my work.

I produced a handful of drawings last year that I used to test the possibilities of the tool. The most recent and cohesive body of work to come from the home-brewed plotter is the Audubon Series. This series of drawings utilizes marker on painted panel, sampled and remixed using John James Audubon’s seminal text Birds of America as a point of departure. Currently, there are two series of drawings within the Audubon Series works, the Birds of Prey and Domestic Camouflage series.

The seven drawings in this series can be viewed on the drawing page.