Skip to content

Thomas
Beutel

Kinetic sculpture · prints · small worlds · stories

I paint, I tinker, I draw, I code, I podcast, I animate, I make, I create. I am a verb.

Welcome to my zug, a snug little corner where ideas pull and stretch. It's a window into my mind. Step through and you'll find yourself following me down many rabbit holes, some deep, some winding, all tangled in creative mischief.

This is where my ideas take shape, where half-formed thoughts find their edges, where experiments, half-finished creations, and completed works all live, waiting to be discovered, reworked, or set free.

Pull up a chair, or a cloud if you prefer, and stay as long as you like. Mind the gap; it occasionally leads to the moon.

Ask Karl the Fog

No. 01 / 04 Kinetic sculpture

Ask Karl the Fog

A Victorian-style fortune-telling machine. Turning the crank moves puffs of cotton fog past an image of the Golden Gate Bridge; after a random number of turns a foghorn sounds, an arcade button lights up, and pressing it makes one of six servos reveal a Magic 8 Ball-style answer.

Year: 2019
Made from: quarter-inch plywood, cotton, Arduino, servo motors, arcade button
Status: Artist's collection

What question would you ask?

Work

Prints, drawings, paintings and objects. Each piece has its own page with the story behind it and how it was made.

All work

Small worlds

Miniatures, Dioramas, and the Redwoods and Pacific Railroad, an HO railroad full of California history and the occasional Jawa.

The railroad

Play

Free contraptions that run in your browser. Make something, print it, use it.

All contraptions

Flux Card

From the zug