Metal Sculpture: A Look at How Engineering Skills can be Used to Create Works of Art

These days you only have to look at some of the latest architectural designs to recognise that engineering skills play a major part in the way a building or an object might look. When you consider the art of people like Damien Hurst and Tracy Emmins it makes it much easier to see metal sculptures and the design of certain machines as works of art in their own right.

Engineers have been trained in the development of skills using welding machines where they use their expertise to produce machine parts of different shapes and sizes. Positioning equipment enable engineers to develop and shape an object of great size, for example part of a ship’s hull or a component of a plane’s structure. These same skills and equipment can also be used in the development of metal sculpture. The whole concept of what we acclaim as a work of art implies that some level of skill has been used in developing the object on display. Art works such as the Angel of the North were possible because the sculptor either had, or employed someone who had sufficient knowledge of working with metals to create such an iconic piece.

The Eye of the Beholder

Most people will be familiar with the saying that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and much the same principle applies to art. What to some people might look like a pile of jumbled metal, will to others represent a work of art. Nowadays metal sculptures and works of art are becoming more prevalent at art exhibitions. The people who produce works of art from pieces of metal need to have or employ a certain level of engineering skill in order to shape metal sculptures. It takes considerable training and expertise to get what you are looking for from specialist equipment such as welding machines. Engineers recognize that it is all too easy to get things wrong just by having the positioning equipment a centimeter or two out of place. Most engineering tasks rely on the precision use of the equipment and the engineer’s eye. Most art tends to rely on the accuracy of the artists eye in producing what they have conceptualised.

What is Art?

It has to be said that where some people see a work of art, others might wonder at the point of a certain display. When you consider the training that engineers undergo it is clear enough that they have to develop an eye for what looks right when working with metal. In the same way, the training that an artist receives is also designed to enable him or her to develop an eye for things that might be considered artistic.

There is as much art in producing a metal sculpture as there is in producing one of alabaster or marble. What is common within this sphere are the ideas and skills of the person who produced that piece of work. Whether a person is trained as an artist or as an engineer they have learn to envision how something will look or is meant to look when it is finished. However it is often only when an individual possess skills as an artist as well as an engineer that a work of true beauty is created.

This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Westermans International who supply positioning and welding equipment for professional use.