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An artist and welder in equal measure

When production welding and creativity unite

Rebecca Fox is an artist who became a welder who became a metal artist. Photo courtesy of Ren Dodge.

Generally speaking, metal artists either start out as welders before they uncover an artistic ability previously hidden, or they are artists at heart who take up welding and metal–working and never look back. Rebecca Fox is a hybrid of both. She is both artist and welder—she has done both professionally and considers them interdependent.

Like many artists who discover welding, the Los Angeles native who now calls San Francisco home discovered her affinity for art first and took classes in various mediums like ceramics. It wasn’t until she met Roger Baird, the instructor of a metal jewelry class at City College of San Francisco, that she even considered metal art. It was then that Baird suggested she enroll in a sculpture class that he also taught.

In that class students were given the opportunity to sculpt with different materials—including metal—during the first semester, and they were allowed to pick a focus at mid-semester. Fox chose metal.

“I tried it, fell in love with it, and have been working with metal for the past 18 years,” Fox said.

Coming Full Circle

Obviously, that’s not the end of the story. Learning to weld was empowering for Fox and more gratifying than she probably realized at the time. At first she intended to learn the ins and outs of the various processes to help her in her artistic pursuits. But the more she welded, the more she wanted to learn.

“The class met only a couple of days a week, but my teacher let me hang around after class so I could use the shop. I took the day class, but there was also a night class, so a lot of times I would work all through the day and stay through the night class.

I used that studio as much as I could.”

Eventually she became a teacher’s assistant and lab technician at the college. Not only did it allow her more time in the shop, it also gave her an opportunity to provide hands-on instruction to beginning welding students.

Fox also took a job as a part-time production welder at a local fabrication shop. And her work as a teacher’s aide and a production welder became a huge asset to her ability to create the kind of metal art that she wanted to.

“I did a lot of production-type work so I would be there TIG welding every day for like 8 hours a day or I’d sit at the ironworker and punch holes or I’d do lots of sanding. I really enjoyed it and I learned so much from doing that.

“At the time I didn’t realize how much that was affecting my artwork. I’d be clamping things and making jigs and doing different stuff, and later I would be like, ‘Wait, how do I know how to do that?’” Fox explained.

Figure 1
“Balanced Energy” encompasses everything Fox strives to achieve in her sculptures. It’s balanced, simple, and uses positive and negative space to create a weightless appearance. Photo courtesy of J.W. Diehl.

After a few years Fox laid down the production torch for good, acquired her own studio space, and pursued metal art full time.

Simple in Appearance Only

Fox describes her work as minimal, light, and contradictory to the material and to the welding process itself. Yes, it’s metal, but there’s a free-flowing weightless balance to its appearance that takes away from the material’s hardness, one that portrays the work as simple (see Figure 1).

While aesthetics and balance are important to Fox, so is good weld appearance.

“Whatever your medium is, you need to be good at all sides of it, not just the artistic side. For me it’s really important to be a good welder and fabricator, because you can have a really amazing piece of art, but if the welds are crappy then, in my mind, it’s diminished.”

Fox stumbled on a way to add texture to her pieces that is quite painstaking and requires focus and attention to detail, but the end result is stunning and, at times, a bit of an optical illusion (see Figure 2).

“It’s actually all done by hand with my TIG welder. I turn the TIG on a setting it shouldn’t be on and then I heat the metal and it pops it. It’s really cool to watch because the metal sort of bubbles up and pops. Its texture, and you get different raised levels of the material. I’ve been playing around with textures for a while so I can figure out if I want it to be smaller or bigger—I can control it a little.”

In addition to the art, Fox shared her love of welding with girls ages 11 to 14 at Rosie’s Girls, a national program designed to build self-esteem, leadership, and confidence through an exploration of the trades.

“That’s one thing I like about welding … breaking down the barrier. Women can do this. I like showing girls that they can do anything.”

Rebecca Fox, rebecca@rebeccafox.com,www.rebeccafox.com

Figure 2
“Completing the Journey” is an optical illusion of sorts. Fox cut and welded the textured piece to the solid material, and then completed the circle using her texturing technique. Photo courtesy of J.W Diehl.

About the Author
FMA Communications Inc.

Amanda Carlson

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Amanda Carlson was named as the editor for The WELDER in January 2017. She is responsible for coordinating and writing or editing all of the magazine’s editorial content. Before joining The WELDER, Amanda was a news editor for two years, coordinating and editing all product and industry news items for several publications and thefabricator.com.