How does an artist with a passion for pottery end up with a committed career in engineering? In the words of Hugo Martinez, Maintenance and HSE engineer at Freudenberg Sealing Technologies (FST) and part-time ceramicist, that is quite an organic development. It turns out that the factors shared by pottery and CAD design are more than meets the eye, even if both involve a form of sculpting.
“Pottery teaches me a lot in expressing my thoughts through the physical world,” Martinez says. “Since I’ve already expressed my 3D sculpting ability in this other field, that of pottery, I can transfer that into CAD. I enjoy making things visually with a 3D aspect, so I let my hands do the talking – in CAD design or pottery in general.”
Martinez has been working at the Santa Ana, Calif., O-rings facility for nearly two years, but this has not stopped him from pursuing his other love – ceramics – on the weekends. He was still in high school when he discovered that he enjoyed working with clay and how much there was to learn about the sculpting craft through trial and error. After taking a ceramics class for a year, he considered a career as a potter, but realized it lacked the financial stability he was looking for. “I also wanted to become a math professor,” he says. “So, then I thought the best course of action was to combine the two, use my brain and my hands on something. I thought mechanical engineering was the best in-between.” He pursued this career track at the University of California, Irvine, and then joined FST as an intern. He accepted an engineering position to work with production machines on the shop floor in 2022. “It was a pretty great decision,” he reflects. “As a mechanical engineer, you design a lot of things on the computer, so instead of using your skills physically in your hand, you apply the mental skills on a computer with computer-aided design. There’s a big combination of math and pottery when it comes to being an engineer.”
While he spends his workdays on such tasks as improving the efficiency of product manufacturing and machine repair with CAD, he is also taking his ceramics to another level by opening a web shop to sell his creations.
He has set up a home studio with his own kiln and pottery wheel and is experimenting with the effects of different glazes on various types of clay. His work includes bowls, pots, and large vases in classic earth-tones with clean, glossy finishes. But more than focusing on the commercial aspect, he wants to share his artistic pieces. “If something happens to sell, that’s great and if it doesn’t, that’s also fine,” he says. “It’s really just for fun.”
