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I forge sculpture, architectural lighting, and home furnishings in white hot iron and bronze. Forms initially explored for their own sake find their way into my gates, railings, chandeliers, lamps, candle sticks, fireplace tool sets, tables and chairs. Three employees and tools, from ancient to modern, help me with these creations. Life experiences subconsciously blend with the rich traditions of my craft to push the work in new directions.
Over the last 40 years, I have spent much time hiking, kayaking, and camping in the deserts and canyons of the Southwest. Often I go alone, in search of vision, transported by the light, vastness, and geologic time made visible. The monumental rock formations captivate me. Carved by wind and water, by faulting and geological upheavals, they appear marvelously random, and yet unerringly reveal the character of their material. They stretch my ideas of beauty and rightness.
I improvise flute music to interact with magical places. I've studied this instrument since childhood on my own, with master players, and intensely as a music major in college. Music is often the intermediary between emotions too subtle for me to capture in words and their final expression in metal.
My three-decade friendship with blacksmith and National Heritage Fellow, Francis Whitaker that began in 1966 as a student at Colorado Rocky Mountain School certainly shaped my approach to ironworking as did a summer of study with Bauhaus-trained master potter, Marguerite Wildenhain. During the 60’s, I founded a California pottery commune. I spent ten years there exploring and exchanging ideas in music and clay with the many artists who passed through.
In1979, Susan Livermore and I married and began building an adobe house in rural New Mexico. We dug into the hillside by hand, gathered many tons of rock from the arroyos, made thousands of adobes, and cut vigas and latillas in the mountains. Those five years of real work with real materials amidst a culture that honored such endeavors changed us. In 1984 we founded the ironworks together. Our twin daughters arrived in 1989. My collectors see all of this in my work though to me it remains a mystery. Perhaps that is the magic.
Christopher Thomson