Finding The Art Within The Machine

For much of my life I've been fascinated with machines. Like many kids I played with Legos, Matchbox cars, and took apart broken alarm clocks to see what was inside. When I got older I began to take a different look at cars, aircraft, boats, and other machines in general. I began to not just look at them as being integrated systems of moving parts but rather as being an expression of the artist who created them.


I can remember looking at vehicles which I once thought were ugly and then later on saying to myself how beautiful I thought the same machine was. The most fascinating of all of them is the machinery of war. I can't remember where I first read the quote but it's one which has been echoed and paraphrased across many countries and cultures. People would work around the clock to come up with the latest helicopter, tank, boat, truck, or airplane because the urgency was critical. Their motivation was "If I don't design a better device then we will lose the war, we will be conquered, and we will lose our way of life." When you think about it that's some incredible motivation indeed.


Those words have always echoed in my head whenever I visit a museum. I look at the simple mechanisms which were crafted into military machines in order to save a few ounces of steel and make a machine more reliable in the process. I can't help but think that in all of this there is a certain level of expression and engineers want everyone to recognize their signature. These little signatures are not always appreciated by looking in photos or waltzing by an old jeep and spending 5 seconds to look at it. The brilliance within the design has to be analyzed and appreciated for the work of art it truly is.





My full-time job is as an Aviation Structural Mechanic in the United States Navy. The job has given me thousands of hours of time analyzing both brilliant and bad designs in aircraft: and then fixing them when they break. In my part time I have been helping the U.S. Army Transportation Museum at Ft. Eustis to restore some of their aircraft on display. My wife and I were walking through the museum and I stopped to look at the dusty old aircraft designed by people who were fearful that communists would destroy the American way of life. I volunteered to help the museum restore some of these pieces of history to their former glory.


With great help from co-workers and some Army Sergeants we have spent countless hours uncovering dust, busting rust, and revealing the beautifully simple and elegant artwork beneath the surface. It's the kind of beauty that a physicist or mathematician says they see in a board full of equations. It's the beauty that a metal-smith sees in a perfectly spaced set of rivets. It's the same beauty that a race car designer sees in a winning car. Nobody can really explain it to you because like all other artwork you simply have to see it for yourself. It's there, you just have to take the time to appreciate it.





I think the average person needs to slow down and take a second look at many machines just like I have. You may find the work of art that lies within. It may be beneath a layer of dirt and corrosion but trust me it is there.