Mad Bots
These characters aren’t just visual — some are
semi-functional. While they aren’t likely to clean
your house or engage in meaningful dialogue, they
are endowed with components such as blinking
eyes, flapping metal wings, “high-voltage mercury
vapor-powered digestive tracts” and “shiny breasts
tipped with blinking rubber nipples.”
Sparky Robot relates through electronic meters
and is powered by an ordinary 110-volt AC wall
plug. Starbot provides news and entertainment via
AM/FM radio and a stereo tape deck. Giant Metal
Robug’s appendages move in the wind to discourage
garden pests. Marilyn Monrobot “has traveled around
the world as a goodwill ambassador and a beauty
queen for the robot revolution,” not to mention being
corrosion-resistant, fireproof, and unbreakable.
Bailey lists Mad magazine and the Johnson Smith
Company as two notable influences, and it’s easy
to see a similar playfulness in his own work. On his
website you’ll find more of his creations plus his
Studio Cam, which tracks his daily progress from
inside the workshop. —Thomas Walker Wilson
In 1976, Clayton Bailey made a robot costume
when he worked as a barker for his tongue-in-cheek
Wonders of the World Museum in Port Costa, Calif.
By way of necessity or chance, he says, “I became a
robot myself … and it just snowballed from there.”
Since then, Bailey has made about 100 life-sized
robot sculptures, all carefully constructed from
found objects whose previous incarnations contribute something unique. For over 30 years, he’s been
collecting battery-powered toys, discarded home
appliances, sports equipment, and bicycle and car
parts from flea markets and scrap metal yards.
Photograph by Clayton Bailey
“I started making them with ceramics, but it was
too heavy and difficult to make large robots, so
I switched to aluminum that can be cut with tinsnips
and hacksaws,” he says. “I get a kick out of figuring
out how to put them together with rivets, nuts, and
bolts. [This] is a kind of figurative sculpture. You
create a character.”
>> He Gots Mad Robots: claytonbailey.com
Clayton Bailey Profile: makezine.com/go/bailey
21 Make:
