Posts Tagged ‘Mechanical Engineer’

Dispatch: Death to the Unregistered

Friday, April 15th, 2011
PE Warrior

He signs his stamp... in BLOOD

I design things that get built.

Buildings. Pipes. Stuff like that.

I have a stamp, a special stamp, that shows I am licensed to do just this. All Engineer’s in my industry need to get this stamp.

There are many like it, but this one is mine.

This is all a matter of public record, and in fact, that is the point. I took a test (a rather difficult test, mind you), and my performance indicated to the great State of California that I can indeed design things, and that it is ok for people to build the things I design. I know enough that it probably won’t break.

So… I stamp my, uh, stamp on drawings when they are all done, just before they are sent out to a bunch of Contractors, who will all bid for the privilege of building the things I design.

Somehow, with all this jumbling in my head, I ended up drawing this little guy, fully licensed to engineer mayhem.

Engineer's Stamp

His stamp is cooler than mine, he is registered under the “Warrior” discipline, while I am registered under the “Mechanical” discipline. He seems to be registered in the State of Despair, while I am registered in the State of California.

In reality, there are no swords involved with my job, and would probably get fired if I tried to involve them in some way. Or at least, I’d get a stern warning, like when I showed up to work with a green Mohawk (it was Halloween). A sword, like my Mohawk, wouldn’t be welcome back in the office the next Monday.

Regardless, I have this doodle, which I painstakingly posted here for you to peruse.

Also, it is nice to know, in this day of electronic this and that, that my stamp is actually still an honest-to-goodness press-it-against-an-inkpad-then-press-it-against-paper stamp, like back in the good old days.

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Posted in Drawing | 1 Comment »

Engineer vs. Artist Smackdown for Control of My Mind

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

The more work I do as an engineer, the less work I do as an artist.

I do, essentially, have two jobs.

From 8-5, Monday through Friday, I am a Mechanical Engineer, licensed by the State of California and everything.

I design very practical things in practical ways. If you ever go to the bathroom in Yosemite Valley, your waste most likely leaves the valley through my pump station. A few of you might drink tap water from plants I helped design and build.

Right now I’m busy designing the replacement heating, cooling, and ventilation systems for a large helicopter repair hangar. Last time I was at the hangar it was full of partially disassembled Blackhawk helicopters. Cool!

When I say “busy”, I really mean “really busy”. I took Saturday off last weekend, but was in the office for 13 hours on Sunday. The weekend before I put in about 25 hours between Saturday morning and Sunday night.

Deadlines are keeping me this busy, I have a lot to get done, and not quite enough time to do it all. Still, It needs to get done. Not doing it isn’t really an option.

For the last few weeks, my mind has been calculating pressure losses, looking up electrical load data, sizing ducts, and drafting equipment details.

It is left brain work, and when I get home, I have nothing left, and nothing goes right.

There’s a painting I started 3 weeks ago sitting on my work bench next to my desk. The paint on my pallette has grown a thick skin that I will have to eventually scrape off.

Every day, I look at this painting, and then think about how I should work on it, and I am neglecting it. I just can’t wrap my head around it though.

I can’t wrap my head around how to apply paint to the canvas right now, I can’t think about the risks I take with presentation when I paint, or the emotional resonance I may be trying to capture.

It’s a good thing, that I’m stuck in my left brain right now. I need my left brain, at least until the end of the day when this project submittal goes out.

I don’t just get stuck in left field though. The same thing happens on the right.

When I start digging into art, and get deep into my right brain activities, I have a hard time switching gears to crank out some rough and dirty engineering work. My job suffers when I am productive at night making art.

It’s quite a conundrum!

I think that the answer is to focus on the more “left-brained” stuff during the week. I can prepare paper, edition prints, even print during the week, keeping it nice and left. No creative stuff though. No image development, no painting, no “artsy” stuff. Keep it analytical.

Friday night, switch gears and swing out to the right for the weekend, and let myself hang out in that mode for two and a half days.

I think I have been trying to switch gears too fast, faster than I am naturally capable of.

Anyway, I’ll test this out, and see how it works for me.

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Posted in Other Stuff | 2 Comments »

I’m a Printmaker, Not an Artist

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Artists get show horned together, as if we are all the same.

It doesn’t matter what subject or what medium, society thinks we are pretty much all the same thing.

Painter, sculpture, illustrator, printer, photographer, all the same.

Luckily I don’t remember specifically who I am going to pick on next, it was someone in Blogistan, or on the Twitter Show. This person was pimping out their “art training”, and from what I could see, all artists got the same training.

We’re not the same though. The skillz required to create a great painting are quite different from the skills required to make a great sculpture. Illustration, yet other skillz. Printmaking? Forgeddaboudit.

There are some basic skills that each of these different types of artists must have, but after those skills are worked out, the skills become wildly different.

I got to thinking that an artists medium is sorta like being a specific type of engineer. Nobody would offer the same training to both a Mechanical Engineer and a Structural Engineer.

A little digress, In the Spice Mines (my term of affection for my DayJob), I am an Engineer. A Mechanical Engineer in fact. I work with Electrical Engineers, Structural Engineers, Civil Engineers, and Architects (sigh) on a regular basis.

We all had the same foundation training in math and science, but the details of what we know are very different. I know enough about each of these to get by (480 volt 3 phase! #5 @ 12″ on center!), but the specialization between fields of engineering is rather different.

Electrical Engineers are concerned with voltages, power, and signal; Mechanical engineers concern themselves with pressure loss and heat gain; Structural Engineers think about shear stress and moments; architects concern themselves with getting their latte right.

Nobody would offer the same training to each of these types of engineers.

Why, as artists, are we offered the same training, wrapped as “artist training”?

I think it is because we think of ourselves as artists first, and our medium second. Contrast this with engineers, who think of them self as an Electrical or Mechanical Engineer first, and an engineer in general second.

I’d like to see artists identify with their medium first, and as an artist second.

“Artist” has too much stigma. Too much baggage.

“Artist” doesn’t capture the very different skills required to produce very different art.

I am a printmaker. I am a painter. Sometimes, an illustrator. I am not a sculpture, or a photographer.

Does this make me an artist? I guess, but after the above, that is just a trifle.

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Posted in Printmaking | 5 Comments »