Welcome!

If you haven’t been here before, this is the home of Tangency Designs, a company started in 2016 by me, Sean Kernan. This company started as a solo engineering design consulting company (and still is), but I’m also branching into the design and creation of art and other products that will initially be for sale on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding site for creative work, then eventually here. Here’s the link to my most recent campaign.

The Knot on Kickstarter

You likely found your way here by way of my first project, The Knot, which reached its funding goal in just 3 days. The Knot is a sculpture I’ve been working on this past year and has evolved into something special. I want to share this project with as many people as I can, but only if they’re actually interested. So, you get to decide! Fill out the form below if you’d like to follow along with my current and future projects.

Let me know you’re interested!

By filling out the form below, you are expressing an interest in the project and are curious enough to get emailed about the finer details. I’m looking forward to sharing more, and your interest is greatly appreciated.

About Me and My Work

Recent History

For the last 8 years or so, I’ve been on my own working as a design engineer for hire. When my mom asked me what it is that I do, I replied,

“I use computers to help people make things.”

In a more accurate, professional sense, I help businesses manufacture parts and design products. I use 3-dimensional computer modeling tools along with other software to control the machines that do cutting, printing, forming, or whatever else to create a physical object that will usually undergo some additional refinement or assembly with other parts by hand. In order to do this well, I have been learning how to use various machines and processes to make things for myself and better understand the tools of manufacturing. I also create the instructions or blueprints used to verify the size and shape of the things that are made with machines or document the steps required to finish or assemble the parts.

Over the last few months however, I’ve decided to focus my energy on not just helping others make things. I’m going to make my own designs and offer them for sale. This has been a dream of mine for over a decade, and I feel like I’ve now got the skills and experience to do this right.

If you’re an Engineer, Why Art?

I have been a creative person since I was a kid. I loved building things and learning how stuff worked. This made the choice to become an engineer fairly obvious for young me. However, in my coursework at college I was never fully satisfied by engineering alone. My creative energy needed to be expressed and ultimately lead to squeezing in an extra year to learn about design, art, and architecture.

Even though I went to work in the Gulf of Mexico as an offshore oilfield engineer, in my free time I filled pages of sketchbooks with drawings of maps or new idea. While designing hydraulic systems and machines in Houston, I learned now to model helixes and other wild shapes in CAD and carved stamps to make custom Christmas cards.

When I first started my design consulting in 2016, I paired developing medical devices with my first taste of sculpture by making a mold and casting a large version of the helix I designed years before. I’ve always had a need to express my creativity, not just use it.

In 2016, I also found the Fab Lab at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, PA. I went there to learn how to build a guitar at night while I designed and sold hydraulic systems in my day job. I quickly integrated into the Fab Lab as an instructor and got to know the core group of makers, artists, tinkerers, musicians, instrument builders, and entrepreneurs. Meeting these people, and getting to use this space was like pouring jet fuel on my creative spark. This is where I really learned how to make almost everything and also how to start a business.

Why Kinetic Sculpture?

I’ve had some ups and downs and false starts over the last few years (like all of us, really), and I feel I cannot keep beating around the bush with expressing my creativity. I’ve designed some products and tools, made attempts to sell them, but it was never a purely creative endeavor. Engineers always ask “Why do we need to make this?” or “What is this for?” This idea has gotten in the way of me putting art into the world for years. Now, as an artist I’m asking,

“Why not?”

My art likely doesn’t look like what you picture when you think of art, and that’s probably because I’m trained as an Engineer… All jokes aside, every artist uses a medium to work in. A painter uses paints with brushes and other tools on a canvas. A musician uses an instrument with rhythms and melodies in a song. I’m using 3D CAD with machines and parts in a moving object.

To me, when I see the meshing of helical gears in a gearbox or the path of a serpentine belt through an engine, I see art. I see the planning, the intention, the perfect timing, and the thousands of hours of practice and skill-building required to make these kinds of things.

My machines and creations don’t look like an engine, but they were made in very similar ways. And because they don’t serve an obvious purpose, I call them sculptures that move. And that movement is what makes them kinetic.