Forging Art...With Steel And Fire

“It’s incredibly empowering to mush red hot steel around,” said Willis Bowman, of the clashing and pounding of blacksmithing.

Bowman and about a half-dozen others spent last weekend at metal artist Clay Beardshear’s studio at the Ivy Builidng for the Arts, hammering raw metal into plant hooks, and generally getting their dose of mid-winter heat.

Bowman started Studio Bricolage (which means “to fiddle” or “to tinker”) four years ago, as a project of , the hands-on learning center based in Kingfield. He wanted to offer opportunities for adults to play and explore. 

“I decided to give myself a treat,” student Jeffrey Etzel said.

He’s a hands-on person with his own handyman business, but he doesn’t have the equipment he would need to do blacksmithing on his own. He found out about the class through his wife, an artist, who forwarded him an email about it. 

Another student, Lynn Dixon, had taken a metal sculpture class eight years ago, and when she heard about the class, decided to take it.

“Metal is cool,” she said. “It’s real malleable stuff.”

A musician and a “computer person”, Dixon doesn’t normally do this kind of thing, but she held her own as she pounded away on the hot steel.