Alan Rath – CLOCK 2
Walk through the Hess Art Collection and you will eventually stop in front of something that seems to watch you back. Clock II by Alan Rath is one of those works. It is part sculpture, part machine, and entirely alive in a way that is hard to describe until you are standing in front of it.
The title is a quiet joke, the kind Rath loved. A clock keeps time, but this one keeps something stranger. Rath was fascinated by how we name our machines after our own bodies, the hands of a clock being the most familiar example. So for Clock II he wrote custom code that animates video built from photographs of his own hands. The result turns an everyday phrase into a living image.
Alan Rath, who lived from 1959 to 2020, was an American electronic and kinetic sculptor who trained as an engineer before he ever called himself an artist. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1982, where he studied with the kinetic art pioneer Otto Piene, then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to build what he liked to call his little machines. Every one of his sculptures runs on electronics he designed himself and software he wrote by hand, often programmed to keep evolving so the work never quite repeats itself.
His work earned a place in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and lives in collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Finding one of his pieces here on Mount Veeder, surrounded by the contemporary art that Donald Hess spent decades gathering, says a great deal about the spirit of this collection.
You can see Clock II in person when you visit the estate. The art and the wine share the same roof, so a tasting here is as much a gallery visit as it is an afternoon in Napa Valley.
A few quick questions, answered
Who was Alan Rath? An MIT-trained electrical engineer turned sculptor who became one of the pioneers of electronic, kinetic, and robotic art, working from the San Francisco Bay Area from the early 1980s until his death in 2020.
What is Clock II about? It plays on the phrase “clock hands,” using software Rath wrote to animate video he created from photographs of his own hands, reflecting his lifelong interest in how people see their machines as extensions of themselves.
Where can you see Clock II? In the Hess Art Collection at Hess Persson Estates on Mount Veeder in Napa Valley, alongside the rest of Donald Hess’s contemporary art holdings.