Crealde Welding Workshop

I got a tip from a friend of Mary Ann de Stefano, named Lynn Warnicke that I might find a Crealde Welding Workshop and interesting subject for sketching. Lynn was right on the money, the workshop was a feast for the eyes.The instructor, David Cumbie, welcomed me and said I could sketch anywhere with one warning, “do not look directly at the welders arcs”. Well that gave me a bit of a fright so this first sketch involves no welding. Here an artist is fitting metal pieces together trying to discover the shape they are meant to form. Metal bits and pieces are lying everywhere, resembling a junkyard. One mans junk is an artists palette. In the foreground a horses ears are formed by railroad spikes.

While doing this sketch a photographer set up an old accordion camera in the entry to the workshop. You can just barley see the camera in the upper left corner of the sketch. Later the photographer showed me a Daguerreotype he had taken of me while I was sketching. It was a beautiful image in rusty browns and my head was slightly blurred from my glancing my subject then the page. It is one of the best images I have ever seem of myself at work. It gave me a ghostly appearance like I had materialized from another time.