THE LAST IRON MAN

In late 1969, I began doing steel sculpture while waiting for my printers to deliver their work to me. I was operating as a graphic designer and printing broker at the time. As I welded and ground, brazed and polished, neighbors and friends often came by to watch me work there in my driveway. I remember them asking; ”Can you fix this? Can you make that?” Soon, I had a back yard and garage full of steel and two helpers working for me. Graphic design was all but forgotten. In the early seventies I rented my first commercial property and was officially known as IRON MEN Ornamental Metalsmiths. It is always with certain trepidation that we become entrepreneurs. Going out on our own is such a risky business and so stressing that we become imbued with the business attitudes of profit and loss and client-employee satisfaction. But you’ve got do the thing to really get the feeling. As time went on, our little company grew stronger and began to get more ambitious. Eventually, we got a deal on a 22,000 square foot building with over 8000 square feet of outside land including a parking lot. Now we were a BIG-TIME operation. Indeed, I almost needed binoculars to see across the main fabricating room. We built a lot of amazing metalwork and steadily gained acceptance with architects and builders. We also had a long list of estate homeowners, museums and churches. We computerized our operations during the mid-1980’s, and began to use CADD drawings to submit our work. This increased client trust and we got even more work. We also had a showroom full of samples and showed our work at a few conventions, winning many prizes and awards. Suddenly, after over 31 years of metalworking . . . half my life almost, I was getting ready to retire. It is difficult to retire an old fire horse. My wife Eileen helped me to deal with this process so that I not go bonkers every time the phone rings. I never before realized how deeply involved and empatterned I had become during all those years. Extricating one’s self from the webwork of business demands is a very difficult problem that is full of feeling. We metalsmiths must provide for the time when we will not be able to work so hard every day of the week. We need to be financially able to make those final stabilizing moves. We need to rent out our spaces, sell off our excess materials and tools . . . in fact, sell the business as a going concern if possible, or else we must auction it off. I had no children nor grand children who care to be interested in carrying on with it, so, I guess in a way; I’m the LAST IRON MAN. What a legacy; what a golden reputation to give up. The feelings of completion and mourning are poignantly intermingled and give a certain ambivalent dichotomy to all future actions taken or imagined. The perspectives are long and the satisfaction is great. So it is with a little sadness and other mixed emotions that I came to this process of celebration. It was the beginning of my brave new future, full of release from the delayed gratification of waiting for that right time. Now I truly began to live the good life for which I worked so long. I looked forward to new creative opportunities facilitated by my glorious Hill Home Forge studios and workshops. Together, my beloved Eileen and I entered into this new time and adventure together. That happened in 2000 and it is now 2008. My life and paradigm have changed for the better. I now have deep knowledge of a total of 73 artistic disciplines including wood, stone and glass as well as many forms of metalsmithing. I am here to tell you that there is definitely life after retirement and you can take that energy you used to secure a living all those years and refocus to become leaner and even more concentrated in the work you choose to pursue. I did it, and so can you. Nic East, Hill Home Forge, Jim Thorpe, PA USA

Well, I won my first bid proposal. I think it was because it was such a small job, none of the bigger companies wanted to mess with it. Good for ME, bad for THEM. It only 20 feet plus 2 4 ft. gates, but it will get a lot of exposure and the owners have other property that needs to be done.

I recently finished my second blacksmithing seminar in Peru and wanted to share with you a video and photo album showing footage from the various workshops in Huancayo, Lima, and Piura. The video is also an educational video for beginning blacksmiths. It explains the processes I used to make the Nazca Lines Book Ends.