Gar Waterman

This is the prototype of my nudibranch inspired art/science exhibit, on display here in Connecticut at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, which remains open during these difficult times. If you're looking for a little relief from Covid sequestration, put on your M-95, get on I-95, and come slug it out.  The aquarium has lots of great marine creatures to look at, but you will not see many actual live sea slugs. An important takeaway from this exhibit is the fact that the vast majority of nudibranchs cannot be removed from their natural habitats without killing them, so the handful of live slugs that are on display represent some of the very few species that can be successfully kept in an aquarium environment.

It's a great show, there are some fabulous photographs by an international crew of slug shooters and, of course, there is sculpture from the world's greatest (and only, as far as I know) stone sea slug sculptor. No easy feat to make a claim like that on a planet of 7 billion plus people, but I'll bet my rhinophores on it.

My show at KLG Gallery in February of 2020 will feature sculpture assembled from foundry patterns. The Bigelow Boiler Company was a major New Haven industry for over a century, and many of these beautifully made wood patterns for casting in iron came from the National Pipe Bending Co., a Bigelow subsidiary. I rescued these from an attic of the old factory building over in Fair Haven not long before it was finally torn down, and I am very pleased to be able to give them another life.

At 43" long, this is the largest beetle sculpture I have created to date. Like the Japanese I am somewhat obsessed with stag beetles - maybe something about the extraordinary configurations of their outsized mandibles. Assemble from myriad pieces of scrap steel, this sculpture required hundreds of hours of welding and grinding - a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

Connecticut boasts a rich history of manufacturing pioneered by the likes of Eli Whitney and Samuel Colt as well as by more contemporary entrepreneurs like Joseph Gerber and strategic material producer OPM. The CNC technical skills taught at The Manufacturing Center will play a critical role in providing the skills that will help Connecticut Industry to continue this legacy.

 Manufacturing machinery typically generates heat. Dissipating this heat is frequently done through a heat sink with cooling fins located somewhere on the apparatus. ‘Heat Sink’ is inspired by the precise arrangements of planer repeated forms that characterize heat sink cooling fins. In this sculptural metaphor, the building itself becomes the 'machine' and the ‘heat’ generated by the creative energy within is dispersed by the sculpture, which is designed to resemble a radially arrayed heat sink. A glowing green function light in cast glass indicates the 'machine'/building is 'on' and doing its job teaching the next generation of machinists. With a Claes Oldenburg-esque paradigm shift in scale ‘Heat Sink’ is a three dimensional art work rendered from an implied function and fabricated with the same CNC production technology that defines the Manufacturing Center's mission.