Welding artist, mother shows her creative metal

EOWYN LeMAY IVEY-Frontiersman reporter

Once cutting flame is applied to steel, there is no turning back. There is no erasing a pencil line, or painting over a misplaced brush stroke. The cuts are permanent, and this is part of what draws artist Allison Wright to the medium.

But there is more. There is the incongruity of a delicate, fleeting iris being captured in cold, enduring metal. There is the way colors, blues and greens and reds, shimmer to the metallic surface when heat is applied correctly to the steel wings of an eagle.

"I like the permanence of it," Wright explained while sitting at her dining room table, her hand on her belly. She is pregnant with twin daughters and, as she described her art, her two other young daughters played in a nearby room.

In the garage, welding equipment was neatly arranged on a workbench. In the kitchen, a halibut trivet Wright cut from steel hung above a clump of dried flowers. The living room was dominated by a 3-foot tall, steel wall hanging of eagles perched on a tree. And in the front driveway, a steel musk ox sat in the rain, slowly growing an appropriately reddish-brown coat of rust.

Like many mothers, Wright is engaged in the intricate balancing act of raising a family while pursuing her own dreams. But she said she has faith that even after the twins arrive, she will eventually be able to continue her art.

"I love having kids, and I love my family, but you have to maintain your own personal interests outside of your family," Wright said. "You can lose yourself in your family."

Her husband and children, in turn, support her art in their own ways. Her husband, Eddie, has helped do some of the heavier work such as grinding the art pieces when Wright was struggling to get ready for a show. And her oldest daughter pays her the highest compliment of imitation - the 4-year-old pretends to put on her own art shows and says she wants to make necklaces when she grows up.

A Palmer High graduate known to many long-time residents as Allison Little, Wright recently returned to her hometown with her family after several years in Texas and Colorado. Former classmates and neighbors may have seen her art at Town Square Art Gallery in Wasilla and at a recent show at Vagabond Blues. Wright has also sold her work at the Alaska State Fair and craft shows such as Colony Christmas and Bad Girls of the North. And among the bigger milestones in her life, Wright said, one of her steel art pieces was chosen for the Alaska juried show at the Anchorage Museum of Art.

Wright said after years of painting and sketching in high school and college, she discovered her medium not in an art class or gallery show but instead while messing around in the agriculture building of the Texas school where she was teaching at the time. She began to experiment with the tools and steel and found she liked what she could do with it. At the time, she was creating three-dimensional paintings and she said it was a natural transition into the steel work.

The medium has formed friendships Wright might never have found in art school. She describes local welder Gary Feaster, of Greatland Welding, as a mentor and she jokingly describes herself as a groupie, someone who rushes over to the welding shop to see a boat being put together.

In her own life there is a similar incongruity as in her art -- a wildflower made of steel, a supermom who has her own welding equipment. Wright jokes that men now love her garage and want to check out all the welding stuff. And when she is at a show, it's not just the typical female art lovers who look over her work, but also the farmers and men who want to closely inspect her welds.

Wright's art begins as a piece of salvaged steel, ranging from 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. The artist sketches her designs - ravens, salmon, wildflowers, eagles, whales -- onto the metal using a stick of soapstone. Then, using a plasma cutter, a gasless cutting torch that operates on compressed air and electricity, she cuts out the design.

Wright then uses an angle grinder and a sander to fine-tune the image. The colors are created by applying heat, either in the oven or with a propane torch. Finally, she uses the grinder and engraver to add the finishing details before she sprays on several coats of a clear enamel to keep the surface from changing.

Wright feels she has found her art form, but at the same time she sees herself expanding her work in different directions, different metals. She wants to experiment more with copper, and said she is interested in creating outdoor art. She also says she would like to move away from the craft shows and try to get her art into more galleries and museum shows.

In the meantime, at 38 weeks of her pregnancy, she is a bit preoccupied. The twins are expected any day.