From Paper to Production

With the help and guidance of Matt at Falling Hammer Productions I created my first fully conceptualized piece.  The piece that you see above took six hours to make.

To create the four leaves I used a band saw to make four 3/8 "fingers" out of a 3/4" bar.  To achieve the "gold" finish the steel was brushed with a brass brush while the bar was in black heat (1000 or so degrees).

I've spent the last few days at Trinity in the insurance capitol of the world and will be moving on to the big apple tomorrow.

4 am

I'm just waking up from an epic nap, realizing I haven't blogged.  

Yesterday, which was four hours and fifteen minutes ago, I went to talk with the smiths at Falling Hammer Productions in Oakville, CT.  Their shop was tucked away in an old factory building that had been converted to retail space.  With layers of dirt petrifying on the windows, the factory looked as though it had been out of commission for quite awhile. It seemed fitting that a blacksmith shop would take residence in such a building, a place that was once useful and productive now reinventing itself to become pertinent once more.

Falling Hammer Productions is a modern day blacksmith shop. This means they do a lot of installation pieces on pre-fabricated railings and gates.  Every time the job calls for custom pieces that can be forged, they'll forge, but times call for a lot of methods of modern smithing that are less expensive and less time consuming than taking hammer to steel.  

Even with spring like temperatures outside, the shop remained cold, insulated by rock walls and literally tons of scrap metal lining the floor.  Peter showed me around and explained to me every tool and piece of equipment in the place.  Falling Hammer Production was started three years ago when three blacksmiths found that they could produce more and better work if they worked together in one shop.  Not being able to get in contact with Mr. Spademan of Iron Fire art and Mr. Brown of Lightning Fire I inquired whether I could work on a piece with Matt or Peter. They were free and I'll be returning tomorrow (read: today) and will have a new piece (or two) to show for it.  

Hartford

I find myself on the campus of Trinity College located in Hartford, Connecticut. The lights are on in Northam tower and the continuous building looming over the quad. One can only imagine the windows being lit by candles in the summer time, flickering with the whims of the winds caught in the trees on the lawn..

As I explained in a letter to a sculpture professor at RISD, the thing that draws me most to blacksmithing is the ability to create organic form out of something so static as steel. To be able to create a leaf or even a fluid natural structure out of a square piece of 3/8th stock is exciting. What allures me is the challenge and the process. Already I am beginning to draw more, to put those processes from mind to paper.

I am staying with a friend, Kat. She's the one manifesting light in her hand. No big deal.