A month or so ago I reached out to our membership through the forum asking if anyone had a project or story they’d be willing to share. One of the people that replied was Dan Rabinovitch. Dan had recently taken our MIG welding and CNC Plasma trainings, and wanted to share a short video documenting a cool mini-firepit he had made as a way to practice his new skills. Dan appeared to be having a great time learning and experimenting, and a couple of weeks later we were able to connect in person so I could chase Dan around our metal and wood shops with my camera. After spending time with Dan I was even more curious, so I sent Dan a selection of questions about where he’s from, what he does outside of Generator, asking about his history as a maker, and his experience here at Generator. Below is the result.
So please enjoy this short piece of writing courtesy of Dan himself!
Name: Dan Rabinovitch
Current Location: Stowe, VT
Birthplace: Israel
Business: Aromatic Designs
Website: www.aromaticdesigns.org
I was born and raised in Israel. At age 13, my family relocated to New Jersey.
I spent the majority of my life living in urban settings, mostly New York City. Around my mid-thirties, I started undergoing an existential process that, only in hindsight, I can recognize as a mid-life crisis. There is of course, far too much depth to this history than can be summed up in a few sentences, but suffice it to say that this was the point I realized that to preserve my sanity, I needed to live in a place where there is more earth than pavement, and make more art.
It took several more years of plotting, exploring, and untethering, but I finally managed to make the (timely) move from NYC to the greater Stowe area in 2019. Around this time I had started working on some ideas for interactive large scale installations, the manifestation of which would require dusting off and expanding my scope and skills. To that end I began to seek out a makerspace/community in the area, and it wasn’t very long before I discovered Generator!
I have not been very disciplined about coming to generator regularly at a specific time, but since joining I’ve taken quite a few tool trainings and tried my hand at several small projects, from home projects like a simple plywood dolly for my stereo system, to custom speaker shelves, to signs and award plaques, to a portable mini-firepit. In almost every case, I’ve benefited from the advice and guidance of generator members and staff, both in person and on the online forum. Thanks generator community!
With a background in graphic design, I naturally gravitate towards using the ever-satisfying CNC tools like the laguna router, the cnc plasma cutter, and the laser cutters. I feel most comfortable in the metal shop at this point, but I’m getting more confident in the wood shop as well. It feels very rewarding to complete small projects, but they are really stepping stones towards a bigger plan for an interactive, kinetic art installation – a human powered, life size music sequencer. As I’ve been honing my fabrication chops and developing a tabletop scale model, I’ve also been refining the simplicity and practical feasibility of the design, and I hope to enlist the considerable knowledge and skill of some of generator’s finest to scale up from a tabletop model to human size, starting this spring.
More info here https://aromaticdesigns.
I feel art is very important, perhaps more so in our time than ever before. Art holds the influential potential, not only to connect hearts and minds to fresh moods and perspectives, but in addition, to ignite a sense of curiosity and wonder. Such an attitude is too often hushed or brushed aside by social influences towards increasing reliance on digital technology, hyper-specialization, and an education system rooted deeply in “the authority of the already established,” at the expense of experimentation and creativity.
Curiosity is a skeleton key to the doors of intuition and imagination.
Thank you to Dan for sharing!
You can find out more about Dan and his work via his website at: www.aromaticdesigns.org.
