Scott Lefton
I’m an artist and a consulting engineer. As an artist, my preferred media are metal, glass, wood, electronics, and digital composite images. My work tends to be complicated and process intensive, preferably across multiple disciplines. Engineering informs my art, and art informs my engineering. I’m occasionally serious about photography, which generally gets used as raw material for composite images.
I started off in small metals, primarily jewelry making, then added on cabinetry and wood sculpture, and then machining of metals. Somewhere along the way, stained glass joined the party. My most recent adventures in art have included kiln fusing and forming of glass, and lost wax casting of glass.
My design process involves the use of engineering CAD to make mechanical forms and to create mechanisms, and then Blender to add surface detail and texture to the parts. Some amount of design is also done in Photoshop, which is also what I use for creating digital composite images. 3D printing (filament, resin, and castable wax) is becoming ever more important to my workflow.
In the past I’ve sold work through numerous galleries, and I regularly show work at science fiction conventions. In 2004 I designed and built the bases for the Hugo trophies, and in 2015 I made the mini (half scale) Hugo rocket that was displayed aboard the ISS.