Chip Garner wanted to be an artist. In fact, before he studied engineering in college, he founded Clayfoot Pottery, in Claremont, California, where he crafted and sold pottery, taught claywork to children and adults, and provided studio space and tutoring to potters.

It’s a study that has remained a part of his life and subtly influences his approach to software and systems engineering, revealing itself as a preference for creatively forging highly particular development and design solutions to unique challenges.

As much as no two hand-thrown pots are ever alike, Garner’s perceptive responses to the uncommon needs of his clients are similarly individualized and “one-off” in character.

But what of the “other” hobby, one that has led Garner to compete in more than 50 soaring events in the US and six abroad and to service as a board member of the Soaring Society of America?

Soaring, or racing sail planes might seem an endeavor demanding the precision of nuclear engineering, but it too calls for the capacity to respond to ever changing conditions, to deploy the best possible information and techniques against rapidly evolving environmental conditions. It is a sport combining technology with touch, knowledge with “feel,” instrumentation with intuition, knowledge and expertise with wisdom.

Chip Garner, the creative scientist, has crafted more than half-a-dozen software advances in cockpit instrumentation and data analysis and reporting to aid soaring pilots. Chip Garner, the artful competitor, has linked those tools with an uncanny ability to envision the abstract character of atmospheric conditions to capture major soaring titles including four US National Championships, numerous regional championships and was winner of the 2005 Federation Aéronautique Internationale Gliding Week, Northern Hemisphere.