﻿- There's something inexplicable about why I chose to be a blacksmith. Having decided at 14
to begin this work and realize that there is a lineage that goes back centuries and millennia,
in fact. If one were to look at the molecular structure of iron, any bar on the rack,
you would most likely find fragments of farm tools and weapons from 1000 AD and the very beginnings
of iron forging. It's also possible that part of my grandfather's car, is also inside this bar,
this salvaged material that's continually being refined. So there's this inherited history that's
tied up in each one of the pieces. When I was 16, I ran across a hoe, a farming tool that
had been patched by a blacksmith seven times. And this piece has really informed the work
probably more than any other piece that I've encountered. And it's partly due to the fact
that my mother being a quilt maker and my father being an amateur archeologist and thinking about
the fragments of things and their use within the culture. It has taught me, of course, the value
in the smallest of pieces that are generated in the shop room. I save all the fragments
from my larger commissions and then forge vessels, bowls, wall pieces from those fragments.
Perhaps one of the most important projects that used and incorporated these found fragments
would be the baptismal font that I forged for the Santa Maria De La Paz Catholic community.
I asked the parishioners to donate pieces of iron that reminded them of their past,
and then forged each one into an individual plate that then was reassembled like a quilt
that surrounded the water. - The whole idea, of course,
being that the babies are baptized in the ancestry of this entire community. In the
case of the Rio Grande Gates for the Albuquerque Museum of Art, I asked that community members
help clean about a quarter-mile stretch of the Rio Grande. And it was great. We,
over several days, cleaned out car springs, 55 gallon drums, and all kinds of things made of
iron that we then forged and folded into individual panels. So what we're gonna do
today is make a pair of tongs. So the first step is making the shoulder. So it's turn to the left,
diagonal blows. Teaching blacksmithing is important to me because it is an oral tradition.
Try to tilt your hammer. You see how it's going thinner here. So try to be really square to the
anvil face. In many different parts of Africa, the father would forge a hammer for his son
and take a small piece of his own hammer and fireweld that into the hammer that he's making for
this next generation. Get the tips first, on both sides. So there's a remembrance of the teachings,
a physical remainder of your teacher and that this is the object that is facilitating all the
work that you'll do for the rest of your life. All right. You guys ready to give it a whirl?
When I was 11, my mother moved to New Mexico to the small farming community of El Rito.
For three summers I worked as an assistant with Peter Wells who had a printing shop,
but he also had a blacksmith shop set up to do repair work for village farmers. And it was
during those sessions working in the forge that I realized, this is really what I wanted to do.
Then Peter moved his print shop to a town outside of Albuquerque and wanted to leave the blacksmith
shop intact in El Rito and offered it to me for $27 a month rent. And I quit high school
and started working as a smith. I remember telling my parents and specifically the Great Aunt Mary,
who I had been living with as a teenager that I wanted to become a blacksmith. And
my aunt's reaction was to immediately cry. So at 16, I received a basis in tool smithing,
assisting farmers in making tools, repairing tools, taking really anything that came through
the door. And it was a great learning experience being thrown into the practical aspect, you know,
headfirst. And it wasn't for several years before commissions came in regularly and my
family came to visit the shop and realized that it was a viable means of livelihood.
For many years, I produced hardware for furniture companies and custom furniture designers and
began working with different contractors who were building detail-oriented oriented homes,
where I could supply the hardware, kitchen tools, and fireplace implements.
Many of us learning blacksmithing in the early '70s looked towards the master smiths that had
produced this work during the early part of the century and trying to design within my
own vocabulary based on these historic styles, but rather designing something that would be
appropriate for the architecture in which it was being placed. Fortunately, the architects
and other clients that I was working with were also interested in seeing a different kind of
expression. The entrance gates made for the Sol y Sombra property was based on a 1930s deco approach
to design, which resulted in a stylized form of cloud with vertical rain falling beneath it.
Being a blacksmith has exposed me to a long history of making and
that provides a kind of fuel to bring towards any of the work that I make.