Creativity springs forth from the darkness

George Gray of Lubbock, Texas, puts his newfound artistic abilities to use in his garage shop, home to his Ironmonger Artworks metal art studio.

Most of us go through life never really understanding just how precious it is or how quickly things can change.

George Gray doesn’t consider himself one of those people.

In January 2011, Gray, a mechanical engineering instructor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, was enjoying a beautiful Saturday morning hike through a local canyon with a colleague. After perching over a 90-degree drop and explaining to his friend that they’d have to walk around to get back down, things went black.

The next thing he remembers is waking up in a hospital.

Before the Fall

Gray describes himself as a ladder logic kind of guy. His mind has always gravitated toward design, engineering, and building things, and the science behind the scenes. He spent 10 years in industry designing food processing and material handling equipment before heading to Texas State Technical College in Waco, Texas, to teach in the mechanical engineering technology program, where he spent the next 20 years.

After a brief stint in an administrative role at a technical college in Wichita, Kan., he accepted an opportunity at Texas Tech, where he now teaches classes in materials science, mechanical design, and manufacturing.

Gray’s heart is in teaching and he feels at home at the front of the classroom. He particularly loves the welding portion of the manufacturing class because of the reaction it gets from his students.

“They really like the welding part of the class. Of course, it’s frustrating in the beginning. The weldments don’t look all that great, but I tell them that we’re not trying to teach them to be welders, we’re trying to teach them to have an awareness of what the process is all about. It comes in handy when they finally do design components to be welded because they’ll know a lot more than what they’ve read in a textbook,” Gray explained.

All in all, life was good. A catastrophic accident shook him to the core and awoke what would soon become another passion: metal art.

An Artistic Awakening

“We were following a natural drainage area as we went from the top on down. We came to this spot where it leveled off but went straight down for about 20 or 30 feet. It looked like water had eaten away the area there, and instead of a nice, smooth slope, it was a drastic 90-degree cut down to the next level. I was just standing there right on the edge, which I probably shouldn’t have been doing, and looking down I remember saying that we’d have to walk around this because we couldn’t go straight down. That’s the last thing I remember.

Gray shies away from the word “artist” to describe himself, yet many of his pieces give viewers the impression that he’s been doing this for a lifetime.

“What I didn’t realize was I was actually standing on a thin piece of sandstone that was cantilevered over the ledge with no support underneath it. I couldn’t tell that because I was just looking straight down. Evidently it just gave way after me standing on it for 30 seconds or whatever it was. Luckily, from what people tell me anyway, I hit one ledge about 10 ft. down and then rolled off that, and fell another 10 ft. before hitting the ground for good, so that ledge broke my fall enough; otherwise I might not be talking to you today.”

Gray suffered a shattered left wrist; skull, spine, and rib fractures; and a concussion. He doesn’t remember the fall, just waking up in the hospital. As a result of the head trauma, his inner ear sends signals to the brain that his body is out of balance, meaning he constantly feels like he’s onboard a cruise ship out at sea.

The summer after the accident, Gray and his wife took a trip to northern Michigan and visited a small college that had iron and steel sculptures on display. Fascinated by a sculpture of a horse, in particular, he appreciated both the artistic quality and the fact that he could recognize many of the components.

After arriving home Gray perused local scrapyards, building up an inventory of interesting discarded pieces by the truckload. Though he had never attempted anything remotely artistic before, he couldn’t ignore the calling to at least give it a try.

It started with a few leaf springs because of their beautiful radiuses and because he was able to find them in varying lengths. They posed a bit of a weldability issue, however, because of their high alloying content and not knowing what exactly they were made of. The process of figuring that out became a great lesson he was able to share with his students.

“I have told my students repeatedly about the wonderful visual sights you get from spark-testing steel. I do this all of the time to figure out what I’m welding and the weldability of what I’m welding.”

He calls his work “Upcycled Steel Transformations,” a process that he describes as taking old, worn-out scrap components, cleaning them up, and welding them as a part of a metal sculpture. Essentially, Gray said, he’s giving these pieces a second chance at life, much like the one he was given.

Now, almost four years removed from his accident, Gray’s artistic endeavor has turned into a part-time hobby under the name Ironmonger Artworks. He has enjoyed sharing his newfound talent with art lovers at local and regional art festivals.

Not a day goes by that he isn’t grateful.