By Jessie Scanlon
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers Kendall Hollis and Richard Castro do materials science. Tom Bollinger does sculpture. Their unlikely partnership grew out of the US government's technology-transfer program, which encourages federally funded laboratories to develop commercial applications for their technologies and make them available to local interests. In New Mexico, that means artists. So early this year Hollis and Castro, who admits he "can't even draw a dog," contacted Bollinger, then head of a nearby foundry. Working together, the three transformed a nuclear weapons storage technology into art.
The technique uses an electrical charge to melt metal wires and then spray the molten liquid onto an object, creating a corrosion-resistant polished surface. The process is more flexible than conventional casting methods: different metals - or any material with a melting point - can be blended seamlessly, and the coating can be spread as thin as a few thousandths of an inch.
Call it the National Security Endowment for the Arts.
ELECTRIC WORD
Boom or BUST
