About the Circuitry

When I first began creating sculptures with electronic circuitry in the mid-80’s I didn’t give much thought to the continued supply of the circuit boards I was using.  While difficult and time-consuming, it was just a matter of talking factory owners out of their overruns, rejects or obsolete stock at dozens of factories within driving distance, and when they saw what I was doing with the circuit boards, many were surprisingly cooperative.  Periodically I would make trips to choose and collect what I could use.  I was only interested in the visual quality of circuitry boards before any components were attached.  To me they were the beautiful skeletons of a new life form.  

After a few years however, I realized that things were changing and that this window on the infancy of evolving technology would soon close, and become invisible to the naked eye.  The miniaturizing of components was shrinking the circuitry patterns on the boards to which components would later be attached, and much of the circuitry pattern that was visible on the circuit boards that I liked was going to be absorbed by the invisible micro-chip components that were to be mounted on the boards.  Also, more and more of the circuit boards were being manufactured with a masking that completely covered the circuitry patterns, leaving only the contact points exposed.  The writing was on the wall. My electronic “skeletons” would soon become “fossils”.  And so up until the mid-nineties I collected as many beautiful or useful boards as I could.  Nearly all the circuit boards I use all come from the late 60’s through the mid-90’s.  That’s why I refer to them as “vintage”.