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Based in Tucson, Arizona, Joseph O'Connell founded his studio, Creative Machines in 1995 to support his creative practice. A diverse team with backgrounds in art, engineering, architecture, and custom fabrication assist him in realizing his award-winning artwork. O'Connell's site-specific sculptures have been commissioned all over the world.

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I approach art as a venue for exploring and expanding what it means to be human. Some of my pieces stand as individual actors: mechanical beings sharing our world with their own unique model of existence. Other works form small spaces that surround: uneasy but protected environments that grant us permission to lower our defenses and witness our own true ways of being. Projected light and human-powered motion blur the boundaries between viewer, artwork, and environment, further allowing a temporary suspension of reality and moments of internal reflection. Using beauty to disarm, these works co-opt their larger site framings into stages for moral, emotional, and intellectual self-reflection.