Artist keeps ’em guessing

Figure 1
In addition to building his own motorcycle, O’Rourke developed his own hardware for the engine (inset). Most motorcycle engines have a variety of fasteners; O’Rourke’s has just one size and style.

Sometimes people ask Chris O’Rourke how he did something; other times they ask why . A metal sculptor without any formal art education, he uses the knowledge he accumulated from a varied career to do things that others don’t do. A case in point is a motorcycle he built a few years ago (see Figure 1). He had enough fabricating experience and had created enough artistic pieces to know that he knew that he could put his skills to use making a unique motorcycle. His creation warranted an article in Easy Rider magazine.

“It ran five pages, and no girl appears on the bike in any of the photos,” O’Rourke said. “That’s extremely rare for that magazine.” It’s not just the look of the bike that gets attention; among motorcycle enthusiasts, the attention to detail stops many midsentence. For example, the exposed engine hardware traditionally is a mix of bolts and studs with nuts in a variety of sizes. O’Rourke disassembled the engine, then put it back together using a single bolt size—bolts that he turned on a lathe. Many of those who notice this start a sentence with, “It looks like you …”

When they realize how much time and effort went into that little detail, the sentence usually trails off.

“Sometimes when I explain what I did, or how I did it, the listener tips his head slightly, like a dog does when it hears a new sound,” O’Rourke said. “That’s the reaction I go for.” Raised eyebrows are another common reaction.

Patiently Persevering in Polishing

When it comes to hiding weld lines and smoothing out surface blemishes, O’Rourke is a perfectionist. He has developed this skill, and the accompanying patience, to the point that many people—occasionally metal fabricators—are mystified by his work. Despite the continuous contours and the transition from square to round, “Romance” doesn’t appear to be fabricated (see Figure 2). To many, it doesn’t even appear to be made from metal. Printed images of it don’t appear to be photographs, but renderings.

His boundless skill—or perhaps it’s an infinitely deep well of patience—at finishing metal shows up in many of his works.

“The idea is to make stainless steel look like chrome,” he said. In O’Rourke’s case, it’s not just an idea; it’s reality. “Carbon steel is about one-quarter the price of stainless steel, but to make it look really good, you need to send it to a chrome shop.” This drives up the cost and puts the delivery schedule beyond O’Rourke’s control, and the quality can vary from one shop to the next. It sounds counterintuitive—he saves time by not sending his work to a plating shop, but then he spends a lot of time polishing—but he has a good idea of how long each project will take, so it gives him control over the timeline. It’s also a point of pride that nearly everyone thinks that his polished stainless steel is chrome-plated carbon steel.

His finesse in polishing stainless steel shows up elsewhere, including residential kitchens.

“Once in a while a tradesman does some work in a kitchen and inadvertently scratches a stainless steel appliance with a screwdriver sticking out of his back pocket,” he said. “I get the call, I go to work on the scratch, and I restore the appliance’s appearance.”

A Tech-savvy Luddite

O’Rourke is no Luddite. He uses some of the latest tools and machines for rolling and forming steel to the shapes he wants, for welding pieces together, and for polishing. For all that, he still has some old-school tendencies. He goes from concept to drawing—a 2-D drawing sketched on his shop floor—to fabricating without the assistance or precision of CAD. Regardless of the tools he does or doesn’t use, his goal is to create works of art so flawless that they appear to be divine creations without burrs, weld beads, grinding marks, or evidence of tools of any sort. Just smooth, flawless surfaces.

As he put it, “I try to remove the human fingerprint.”

Figure 2
On one of O’Rourke’s pieces, “Romance,” the edges and surfaces are so smooth and flawless that it doesn’t look like it was fabricated from metal, but molded in plastic.