Rick Hale is a clockmaking artist who lives in Kalamazoo Michigan. He makes fantastic large clocks from wood. His site is HERE.
Artist's Statement
I've learned most of what I know through reading old books on mechanical engineering, clockmaking, physics, & art.
Each of my timepieces is crafted from Michigan hardwoods, brass, & stone over the course of about 400 hours. I make a special effort to pay homage to the best work of the best clockmakers of the 18th century—Especially that of my favorite clockmaker, the legendary John Harrison.
In combining two ancient traditions—clockmaking & woodwrighting—I'm trying to change the way feel & process the flow of time. Time is hard on living things as it passes, surging endlessly out of the future & into the past. We've all felt it. Gentle, silent, ceaseless destruction, the slow, entropic loss of information & physical form. It's why many of us create. It's why we learn, teach, cultivate, persist. It's why we work through the night, rage quietly, methodically, against oblivion. It's why this wood sways again in the light of day, speaks again in the soft, creaking language of trees—alive, despite the wreckage.
I've learned most of what I know through reading old books on mechanical engineering, clockmaking, physics, & art.
Each of my timepieces is crafted from Michigan hardwoods, brass, & stone over the course of about 400 hours. I make a special effort to pay homage to the best work of the best clockmakers of the 18th century—Especially that of my favorite clockmaker, the legendary John Harrison.
In combining two ancient traditions—clockmaking & woodwrighting—I'm trying to change the way feel & process the flow of time. Time is hard on living things as it passes, surging endlessly out of the future & into the past. We've all felt it. Gentle, silent, ceaseless destruction, the slow, entropic loss of information & physical form. It's why many of us create. It's why we learn, teach, cultivate, persist. It's why we work through the night, rage quietly, methodically, against oblivion. It's why this wood sways again in the light of day, speaks again in the soft, creaking language of trees—alive, despite the wreckage.
