Graduating from school really helped make the difference. While studying at college and being exposed to new ideas, concepts and materials was so important, my greatest growth has happened since I left. I've had to carve out time after work to make something on my own. There has been no teacher to assign me a topic, so I have had to dig deep to make something meaningful on my own. I'm still transitioning. I'm experimenting. I'm figuring out what it is that I'm doing, but there is some real progress taking place here.
When I first began my plans for moving on to work that I love, I thought that I would be a bronze artist. I've loved sculpting clay, and had gotten a piece bronzed over the winter, so I began working out how I could make my own foundry to produce more of my work. Bronzing art is a very interesting process. It is pretty complicated as well. I actually ended up buying most of the materials I would need for very cheep. When we moved I was set on my making a small foundry right in my parents back yard.
Around the time that I was gathering the bronze stuff, I purchased a small flux core wire fed welder from Harbor Freight. I started welding a few sculptures at home using scrap steel I had collected. I began to fall in love with the process, and the materials. It's great to be able to go out and work on a project, and then be DONE with it. That doesn't happen with bronzing. It can take from weeks to months for the sculpture to go through the process of mold making, wax casting, bronzing and finishing. So, for now, the foundry is on hold and I am welding. I could never have foreseen where I would be now, or what I would be making. That's what's so amazing about our journeys in life. We take a few steps in the dark and the path leads us on. But we must make the first step.
And now, Here are some pictures of a metal man I made recently:
The head is the gas tank of an old lawn mower our family had for as long as I can remember, and the limbs are a combination of metal banding, pipes, gears, bolts, and other steel materials.