Chris Bathgate is a self-taught machinist sculptor and machine builder born in Baltimore, Maryland. He has spent 15 years building, modifying and using a variety of metalworking tools and machinery. He has assembled an elaborate machine shop of repurposed and homemade robotic and manual machine tools, along with a multitude of other unique equipment and inventions. Bathgate’s body of work is comprised of intricately machined metal sculptures that represent the combination of his unique metalworking style with a pragmatic, logistics-based approach to engineering complex metal objects. His work illustrates that creativity alone does not drive human imagination, but that the need to solve and overcome problems also leads to inspiration. His pieces exemplify a method in which the restraints inherent to his process are used as a catalyst for his sculptural ideas, rather than serving as barriers or limitations for them.