Pass the Torch?

Metal Work during the Middle Ages used to be a Secret Society and you could be put to death for teaching the wrong person the trade.  Keep it mysterious and secret and you can get more money for it!  It was a Guild Trade with long apprentices and high expectations.  I have been searching for an appropriate student to take over what I have started for at least the past five years.  You would think this would be simple, yet there is so much more to it than "just welding".
I can teach anyone to  weld in about five minutes.  It is mostly about losing fear and not being afraid to get dirty.  Like any trade, practice makes perfect.  When I started welding about 26 years ago I brought to this trade 20 years experience in the Construction Industry and a lifetime "eye for art".
My competition were, perhaps, better welders, but they were trailer builders and had, maybe 2 or 3 set designs for fencing and gates.  Frankly none of them very good.  I brought my designs and creations to the local Home and Garden Show for 25 years without missing one and could get $50,000 worth of work from a single Show and I did this twice a year.   You would think I would have people standing in line to take over what I started!
I never wanted to Sell this business.  In reality, without me, it is just a welder in a shop.  I wanted to give it away, but give it away to someone who would take it.  That takes someone willing to put up with the "wax on, wax off" kind of experience!  It is not just welding and fabrication I have to teach but art appreciation and the satisfaction of a "job well done".  Passion, and the constant desire to do the next job better!  This should be true with every job, with Life, and whatever we do.  It should be incorporated into who we are.  Yet, it is almost impossible to find!   I have taught over a dozen people to weld.  I can't teach Passion!   You want to be a good welder?  Study Art!  Spend hours pouring over abstract paintings.  Reconnect synopses.   Dream.
    My latest and maybe last apprentice I found on Craigslist about a year and a half ago.  I had some cleanup and construction around my house and needed help and he offered to work for $10 per hour.
I told him I couldn't pay anyone less than $12 so we got off to a good start.  Most workers, even good ones do what they are told and minimize the task, doing nothing more, reaching no hire than expected.  Carlos always does much more.  When confronted with an unexpected situation he will research the issue and tell me what he discovered on YouTube the next morning.  To improve a job he will put in his own time.  I know lots of people who won't do this and Carlos does it every evening!
As the construction progressed and came to a close I offered to teach him to weld.  Without pay.
Carlos is a fast learner and that lasted less than a week.  He would weld on scraps, learn a bit on fabrication and study on the Internet in  the evenings. Always better the next day.
A year and  half later he can make $2,000 in a week!!!  I think I have found some one.

 Nice measurements, great fabrication, perfect fit and strong enough to tie a horse to!

1st Show Ever!

I don't even remember the very first art show I participated in so many years ago.  I have done dozens and dozens of them, Home Shows, Gallery Events, Summer Exhibits and near Christmas time.  Making Art is the fun part but if you can't sell it the whole experience becomes tiresome and you run out of materials.  There is tons of anxiety to a first show.   Are you really ready?  Maybe forgotten some stuff?
Will anybody come?  and what will be their reaction?  It is a bit like being on stage and there are butterflies for sure.  But don't you wish you had bought the first Van Gogh?
    The Show is this Friday, an evening event with live music and festivities from 5pm until 9pm and all day Saturday from 9am until 5pm at Deterring Orchard near Harrisburg.  You can get fresh peaches at the same time!
   This will be my apprentices first show!  Her name is Sydnee Hale and she has an eye for Art and with the steady hand of a surgeon she is already a skilled welder.  A self proclaimed "perfectionist",
it will be worth a pleasant drive into the countryside to see her creations.  Her stand alone wall hangings would be great as a focus on a living room wall and strong enough to support the most vigorous of vines when mounted to an outside wall.  Her musical flowing bench is admired by all who have seen it and at five feet long is more than comfortable for three adults or a pile of children.  She has created three legged trellises 5, 6 and 7 feet tall that are whimsical, stylish and classical.

 Plant Stands for any sized pot, only $35.

    Most items on display are without that "artist tax" that established artists can demand and you will discover that if too late for this season in your garden, all of them would make wonderful artisan crafted and one of a kind Christmas gifts!

 4 and 5 foot "gallery pedestals" with feet and powder coated.

   With my support and encouragement this is Sydnee's show although I will have my photo album there,

 Made in Springfield Oregon from American Steel

seeking larger installation projects, nice substantial gated entries, rails and custom work.  My signature

 Wall Hanging or serious trellis

"Stone Posts" will be there, 5 and 6 foot concrete slated posts used as lamp posts and pedestrian gate posts.  There will be a six foot beauty there, made of sand slate and bone grout.  The only one in the world and worth the drive by itself!

 Double Curved, powder coated "silver vein"

   If you get a chance come visit us and although you may know me, say hello to Sydnee.  You will be impressed, I guarantee it!

Sydnee Hale, after the perfect picture!

License to Create



 


 This little wing completes the upstairs balcony railing.



 Installed this lower section yesterday.  It has some glass

pieces and two solid brass bars, classical and modern.

 It is not often that any artist is "given license",
liberty to do what they want.  I had to comply with safety codes, the maximum gap being 4" so a child's head can't go through this railing, other than that it was "do whatever you like, Jerry".  This is so flattering and only comes with a huge amount of trust.
     I learned long ago that some elements just plain clash. I love contrast and even particular pieces that scream for attention but you have to be careful that they are not in battle with each other.
    This lower section, the first of the four sections, I did last because it is the most important piece to the total sculpture.  It is the first piece seen as you walk in the front door and I wanted it to be able to stand alone but also to force the eye up in curiosity, like,
"wow, what does the rest of this look like?"
   It is not always easy putting modern elements together with classical elements.  The histories do not mix well.  This piece contains the same circles as the other pieces but two are filled with glass.  It has the same two vertical bars but these in the lower section are solid brass.
     This railing sculpture will be hand lacquered and most will have a rust petina except for some highlighted elements which will be polished before the finish to highlight them.
   When the house is finished, the railings lacquered and the construction debris removed I will go back there and get the finished photos for you.  It should be pretty nice.
MORE of my work is HERE.

No Fear!

 These are 5' tall, made in my backyard studio
and weigh about 150 pounds.

 Once you start playing with metal you soon realize that there
are no limits, no restrictions on what can be done.

     I think that is the trick to great art, new styles to copy and artists to remember. I developed an interest in welding out of necessity.  About 15 years ago I invented "stoneposts", my company name and the slate covered, concrete interrior light posts that are now found in five Western States and all over my town.  My customers were wanting ornamental iron work attached to these posts, gates and fencing and vines. The metal workers in my town worked on cars and trailers and could only produce a fence panel with vertical bars 4 inches apart. My posts need something more than that, more of something and I didn't even know what!
     I bought a lot of books.  Not "how to books," I could figure that out myself. Just design books showing what has been done throughout the centuries, all over the world.  I learned that design and art in steel was an essential element in the strength of the piece.  Beautiful strength and I was left with wondering why are we making "car lot fencing" when something great is available?
     Once you figure out the how to of welding it is addictive and probably not unlike any other art form.

 One piece of red!

And, like any other art form, the first step is you have to really want to do it.  It is like a fire under the skin.

Have no fear.  Yes, you can do anything with steel
but so many people are afraid to do anything different!  That is the downside of our "standardized" civilization.  We want what the neighbor's have and are reluctant to try something different.


You can see more of my work HERE.

We'll Talk Art Today!

 In the "old days" this would all be done on a forge out of solid
iron and weigh maybe 1,000 pounds.  Today it is hollow tube and wire-welded
and weighs less than 100 pounds.

 Walking up the stairs this is what you see!

 On my welding table

Iworked with wood for over 25 years before I ever saw a stick of metal.  I have done a lot with wood, from   building houses and apartments, to building furniture and chess tables. I came upon metal by accident about 15 years ago and "fell in love for the very first time."  You can do anything in metal, any shape, any length, whatever you can imagine.  It can be rough and heavy or smooth, like silk to the touch.




 

 Like Ocean Waves or maybe a river complete with bubbles!

I just finished this job, a little railing on top of a knee wall over-looking a stairwell.

There is another section to this that will be at the winery but they are not quite ready for me. When I install that one I'll post a photo of it.




You can see more of my work HERE!

I am on a Roll...

     I went eight months without working in my shop, part of the fun bi-product of cancer, and part due to this lousy economy.  I have been busy this past two weeks and completed two nice jobs which are now at the powder coater getting painted "silver vein", a black and silver combination.  They will be gorgeous.  Iron work is traditionally black because for thousands of years it was made on a forge and touched with beeswax to inhibit rust.  That process always turned it black and the color just became traditional.  For outside work I still prefer the traditional black.  It just seems right that way and it is an easy color to touch up when the inevitable rust does appear.  And it will.  It is one of the very few quotes from the Bible that I know.  If a customer asks me if it will rust I always guarantee them it will, says so in the Bible!  I think part of the charm of very old ironwork are the layers upon layers of paint.
     Inside work is a little different.  These pieces are not exposed to the weather and not subject to rust.  There are about a thousand colors to choose from and over the years I think I have used them all.  Silver vein and copper vein are probably my favorite but I have done them in bright red and every primary color.
White is my least favorite because it never stays that way and shows every speck of dirt.
     Nothing is perfect but powder coating is pretty close.  Think of the paint job on your car or a brand new bicycle.  In fact it was a bicycle racer who invented powder coating.  He wanted that smoothest, no friction ride as was possible.  Powder coating is just that, a powdered paint is sprayed over the surface and then the piece is put into an oven and the paint melts evenly and into every crack and hole.  It always comes out beautiful.
     My next job which I will begin today, is an arbor, and it will be in rust.  I like the natural just plain rust surface too.  It is flawless to begin with and never needs maintenance.  My arbors are strong, not like the imports that come in a cardboard box that won't even support themselves let alone a vine.  Each side is "L" shaped and has 3 legs which are set in concrete.  The roof varies depending on the setting, but a steep gabled Victorian is my favorite.
     Three jobs, one right after the other, makes me so happy but I don't think it is a sign that the economy is turning around.  I could wait weeks or months for the phone to ring with that next job.  I will build up my Spring inventory during this time and get ready for the garden art shows.

 One of my arbors in rust.

My work can be seen Here.

Art in Steel

I don't work off of Blueprints and don't consider myself a fabricator.  I don't work on cars and have never made a trailer.  I learned about design in Ornamental decorative iron work from reading books.  I learned to weld by just doing in, trial and error until I got good at it.  Iron work has its own "Art History" and it is pretty interesting.
    It began as a secretive trade, part of the metallurgy turning lead into gold type of work.  It became a criminal offence to share the secretes of this trade.  No jail in those days, you died.  They were pretty serious.  I think it was like an electricians' union.  You convince people it is difficult and they won't try it and you can charge more money.  In the Middle Ages every little city had an iron worker.  That is how you got the shoes for your horse.  It was the guy who made your sword and the source for the gates around your estate.  These were individual artists, each developing their own methods and artistic flair. The designs were not just pretty elements added to the iron work.  They were an integral part of its strength.  Today we remove the design, take the art out of it and add cross bars to attempt this strength.
   It wasn't until the seventeenth century that Architects attempted to take over the business of iron work.  Yes, they had problems with city planers in those days too.  They lost a lot of their individual styles, what a particular iron forger might dream up, as architects and city planers took over the trade.  This remained that way until the early part of the Twentieth Century when Art Deco and Art Nouveau rebelled against this situation and once again new forms of this very old trade emerged.
     Today it seems we are back to the city planers and what I would find in my city, you will find in yours.  It is pretty much the same now all over the world, people building the same stuff.  Mass importation and cheap foreign products have encouraged this sameness.  That Cosco Arbor is everywhere, in backyards all over the world right next to the white plastic lawnchair.  Pretty amazing, really!
   I can't get excited about building stuff like that.  I can't draw worth a damn although I can make a sketch and always tell my clients that it will look "something like the drawing".  I promise them code compliance and it will be strong, on time and on budget, but I need license to work.
    I start the project at night as I get ready for bed.  I put myself there.  Seriously, I am at the top of the stairs
or wherever the job may be, and I just have a good old look around.  I don't do the measurements in my sleep but I do dream about it, placing bits of steel here and there and maybe twisting them to see what they may look like, just collecting ideas.  Sometimes I can do this in one night and sometimes it could take a week.  I know when it is done and I wake up and I am full of energy and I have already built it.

    I don't weld on a table, hunched over the piece like most fabricators.  I have a steel wall in my shop, a vertical wall and my work hangs there as if a painting on an easel.  I add bits and pieces and stand back and look at it, see what it needs to be.  There are no drawings, no blueprints, the only confinement is a measurement.  It has to fit.

More of my work is HERE.

Fun in Art

     Sometimes I think that "Real Artists" are making fun of us and I admit in my "paintings" I am throwing that fun right back at them.  I mean, really, how in the hell could a print which you can get with a click of a mouse, be worth thousands of dollars?  I am an old guy and I think the "Beatles" were hugely successful and talented, but they always kept their humor.  Remember that song, "Give me Money"? At least they were honest.  Dennis Hopper collected a lot of art and now it is up for auction.  He once shot two bullet holes into a portrait of Mao painted by Andy Warhol.  Andy wasn't offended and called Dennis a "collaborator" in the new art piece,  Mao with bullet holes.  He laughed too.  He knew the joke is on us, that this portrait that might contain two dollars worth of paint on a thirty dollar canvas will sell for God knows what at the auction.
     I think they have a certain contempt for the public and we allow this because they are probably right. We don't know what we want and we change our mind when the Spring styles emerge.  It is a fact, well I heard it somewhere, that the fashionable colors for next year will be found in the underwear of French fashion models this Spring.  Are we really that stupid?  We throw away just about everything.  The only permanent monuments we build are landfills.  Art itself is cheap to mass produce and throw away on a whim. We like it, you know, because it fits with the couch.

     I really think it comes down to this:  art is a business. I know with my metal art if it just stays around my shop then I don't sell much of it.  It can be expensive to produce and if I don't sell it I can't afford to make more of it.  We need the galleries, the exhibitions and public showings, even the art critics to pedal our wares.  Selling of art is a business too.  In the 1970's some clever salespeople convinced us that shag carpeting was the lastest in home floor coverings and we bought that hook, line and sinker!  Art is no different.       My Other Blog is Here.

In Progress

 So this is a sculpture in progress.  It is about five feet by seven feet and four feet tall, except the lady who is six feet tall.  The pots will be cleaned and repainted and planted with cascading fuchsias. I am building it for a juried art competition for a gallery show in September.  The Theme is recycling/reuse and I think this will be appropriate. It is made of 100% scrap.  The center support is a huge muffler and the twisted steel, stuff I found, rusted and thrown into the scrap heap.  The flower pots were once porcelain over steel light fixtures from an old school gymnasium.
    If this doesn't get me into the show or if it doesn't sell, it will look great in my garden!

The lady is far from finished.  She needs a hat! and arms, of course

with lots of bracelets and jewelry, and fingers with rings!

The eyes are ball bearings, tossed for their imperfections.

The eyebrows are bicycle gears, ears are washers and earrings

are stainless steel logos from a motor home company that went

out of business.

The child is pretending to be holding this whole display up. He is happy with his strength!

I really agree with the philosophy of this show.
All this stuff was found at my local recycling scrap steel yard and all of it was on its way to China.
Ground and bailed for their reuse so we could buy more stuff from China!  It would be so easy to stop this process!  Just don't buy junk, that is all it would take. A philosophy of quality. The satisfaction of knowing that whoever made what we bought did it well and sold it at a fair price. Easy to say but difficult to do because deep down inside we want it cheap.  Funny about that.  We get what we pay for.
My Other Blog is Here.

Hang Art

I don't have the hang of these new Blog features, and maybe this photo will not come out as intended.  Anyway, I think it is ironic that I call this blog "Hang Art" and here are my big gates ready to be hung! They are done and out of the shop and today they will be installed. They weigh about 250 pounds each and should last longer than I will.  That is the guarantee anyway. On Monday I will post the installed picture for your approval.  Never seen one like this before, have you?  Me neither, except in a dream, that is why I built it. It is not particularly expensive.  I have built much smaller gates for a lot more money.  It is actually a simple gate but finds its distinction in the copper panels and the center stainless steel panel.  It is well built with complete welds and structural steel throughout.  I think it will get noticed and that is how I find work, word of mouth, the best advertising there is! 

My Other Blog is HERE.

Investment in Art

I like to think that Art is what I do. Good Art is when you buy it and my "Great Art" is when you can sell it for more than you paid. A lot of what I do cannot be reproduced for any price.

They are from found flotsam and jetsam, discarded items given new life. Other pieces I have struggled with, maybe creating something you like but I am not willing to do it again. Still other pieces contain copper and that price has tripled. Three feet by five feet of copper plate is over a thousand dollars now. That alone makes my art an investment!

I don't think it is difficult to teach art. I think we just don't put much value in it. Even our own children's art is relegated to the refrigerator. That same piece, framed and on the living room wall would look better and be better and say more. Art is the first subject to get cut in school, then drama, and Shakespeare and literature. All the unnecessary things.

I like to think that Art is an investment. A key of some kind to open the doors of appreciation, eagerness and passion, the love of life.

My Other Blog is Here

Galleries are Closing...

The Art Galleries all up and down this valley I live in are closing their doors, one after the other, like a cold wind is coming. I have had my "stuff" in a couple of them and know they are run by caring and dedicated people. They are expensive to operate. The lease on the building, maintenance, employees, wine and food for opening nights, it all adds up. Most artists hate the process of selling their own work, haggling over dollars, reducing their art to a value per hour.

We need the enthusiasm of the gallery operators who can put the artist and client together.

Artists are hit first, hardest and longest by a recession. There is no room for art when the cupboards are bare and money is dwindling. We lose the galleries and some good artists because of this recession. They will find other things to do, putting their talents on hold. Survival becomes an issue.

I like to support artists in the little ways that I can. I buy nothing from China; I am not a good customer of Walmart. I buy cards and calendars and prints and hand-crafted items from artists who make these. Sometimes it is just encouragement. I think an artist might make $5 from a $25 calendar. I like to think that I encourage a dream.

The KEY to All My Sites is Here.

No Rules, Nothing to Say...

I am not a painter but "I slept at a Holiday Inn last night"! I am just having fun. I give paint a will and watch in amazement what it can do when out of the tube. I have ten store bought colors and that is confusing enough. They can become anything. I prefer to paint on metal where the colors aren't sucked into the surface and disappear. I like them alive and moving, mixing or not, going this way and that way. They become what they want, what they need to be, what they have always been.

I admit that I stand back and have a look and always feel a bit pretentious when I do this.

I think artists need to do this, find what is missing and what is too much. I think there are stories within a painting, a vocabulary of color, translations in design. A visual language

My Website is HERE! lots more paintings!.

"A Candle Loses Nothing...

...by Lighting Another Candle." What a great quotation and I have no idea who first said it, making it all the better. Gifts should be free of expectations.

A lot of artists are secretive with their creations and won't share their methods, their recipes,

the way they do things. Color on metal, a particular patina can be a difficult process. It used to be a crime, punishable by death, to teach metallurgy or anything about the metal arts. A good sword was tempered by thrusting it into the stomach of a willing slave. It is difficult to get good help these days.

I like iron work that stops traffic or at least slows it down. The choice is to appreciate this art and wonder who made it or to drive on by without giving it a thought. In a shared gallery space

one good exhibit is not enough. The tempo is set by peoples' expectations. I want everyone to be their best and the crowd to move slowly.

I have been copied, sure, but more often I have raised the bar and given motive for other metal artists to do their best. Not so much better than I am but better than they were. I love the transition from being a fabricator to becoming an artist. It is an honor when they show me their work.

My Other Blog is Here.

Accidental Art

Much of life is accidental, could have gone either way or not at all. On my other blog I tell of stealing a ring from the Lake Gods and that is perhaps the first time I had a sense of power.

Artists are always doing this, defining things; we capture and confine, duplicate and interpret.

It is not enough to see and just be. We want to create and become a part of it all. We want to put our art into things and us into the art. We are after something.

Not all of it is by design. The first dripped paint was an accident. I make do with what I have

in my metal shop. I like scrounging, finding different uses for common objects. I love shapes and patterns if they are not too repetitive. I like to create the unseeable, not thought of things.

I may accidently find something but when I put it into my art it is on purpose.

Painting with Oil

Well I turned 64 and received oil paints for my birthday so I had to play with them! This is my Very First Oil Painting. It is on metal, of course and now with my others' lives a quiet life only in the computer. I am happy, I have found a new toy!

A Little Piece of My Heart

.....literally! Most of my art is in steel and I cut myself all the time, leaving my DNA on each project I make. Now I wear gloves because the Neuropathy in my hands won't allow closer contact. I never wore gloves before the cancer, always wanting to get as close to my work as possible. I mostly weld vertically, my pieces tacked to a steel frame in my shop, much as an artist would paint. I like to weld a bit, adding this or that, and stand back and have a look. I like that perspective and the idea that I am making one huge giant picture. I like to touch what I am making, feel what it needs to be and create as I go along. I can get lost really easily while I am in my shop working on these pieces. Time stops or floats or zaps by in an instant. It makes no difference, it is not part of me. Who I am and what I do is in each piece I create and as it goes from my house to yours, you are litterally taking a piece of me with you!

My Cancer Free Blog is Here!

Learning a Discipline...

.....takes discipline. Every failure I have had in my life was because I quit. Every missed opportunity was an expectation that the doors would open easily and I could sail through.

I was fifty years old and had never seen a welder when I was given one, a thoughtful gift from a friend. The whole process I found fascinating from the beginning, mixing molecules from one piece of steel into the other. It is not like glue, not stuck together at all, but becomes one piece, some creation that you made. I fell in love with it. I have an obssesive nature to me when I really want to do something and knowing the reasons for my past failures, I was determined to succeed.

You can learn to weld in about five minutes but to get good at it takes practice and about 2,000 hours, that is about a year. You learn to make the little swirles, heating one piece and bringing it into the other, and you practice this to the point that a final grinding and polishing is not even necessary. And then there is the fabrication part requiring a welding table, jigs and guides and clamps. Finally there is design. There are a lot of ways to build the same thing and you learn that design is not just a pretty added on element, but like a truss, adds strength and integrity to the piece. I never read a book on welding but acquired a lot of them on design and its function in the metal arts.

My other blog is HERE

Links within Links

I am still learning this computer nether world of cyber space. I am sitting in my office
of my studio, in my backyard, on this eight year old machine. That is antique in computer time.
It was "top of the line" at the time. I spent $2,200 on it and bought it for my daughter when she went to college. It is so v e r r y s l o w and I can watch Youtube seven seconds at a time, a three minute segment can take 15 minutes! Typing is fast though and I have thousands of pictures on it, truly a space age tool.
I learned everything with the crash and burn method and thought people really cared about me! I got e-mails from all over the world, from pharmaceutical companies in India
(how did they KNOW?), naked Russian college students wanting to be pen pals, Nigerians wanting to share their wealth with ME, how lucky can you get, and so many free offers I would have to build a warehouse to store them all.
It cost me $500 to fix my computer and get all the crap out of it but it is like tuition and I learned a valuable lesson. It is not "free", I don't know anyone in Nigeria, the naked Russians are men, and I have photo editing from six different suppliers. Anti-virus programs like to fight each other! I no longer open ALL my e-mails.
I do have Websites though and a lot of them. If you get bored this week and want even more of what I do, want to see my garden, my big art and little stuff, desire an education on Ornamental Iron or are surfing for ideas, HERE THEY ARE and, yes, there are links within links which will take you to eight or ten other sites, all mine. I am thinking of deleting them soon and starting all over again but I'll leave them there for a week or so.

Dark Matter

All of my paintings are not light and colorful, but I admit most of them are.

I have 12 store bought colors, all acrylic, and several very cheap brushes. I mostly paint on copper or steel because I have a lot of it in my metal shop but yesterday I found hiding in the corner, a sheet of aluminum and thought I would try that. This is a mixture of paints and grinding and a little shop dust. It lived a happy and short life and then I ground it off, to be lurking in my computer, like a virus, waiting!

My Other Blog is HERE!