Here, I am working on my latest drill bit for my thesis show. This piece is wheel-thrown and slab-built. I intend for the work to be installed horizontally with additional threaded pipe sections attached to the non-business end.
This tool is called a polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) drill bit, used by the petroleum industry to drill into the earth. PDC bits represent the most advanced technology for the process of extracting oil and gas from the earth. I think of these implements as the prow of a ship, leading humans into the farthest subterranean depths.
When I think of technologies that are pioneering the physical edges of our environment Voyager 1, the space probe credited as the first human-made object to leave the Solar System, or Higgs Boson particle accelerator, making discoveries into the farthest reaches of quantum-space, readily come to mind. By interpreting drill bit morphology, each a simple adamantine device, I am shedding light on the subterranean, a place that exists, that is close, that we are completely dependent on, and that we hardly ever acknowledge. This is a landscape that informs my work.
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