Artisan crafter and inspired bold dynamic art.
Where does one begin, when trying to tell someone about his life. I was born in 1954 in an old, farm house in South Carolina. My father had built a shop as a blacksmith; later he bought a welding machine. In those days in the surrounding community, where he worked was mainly peach orchards and cotton fields. While still wearing cotton diapers, I started picking cotton in a paper bag before working my way up to a cotton sack. I still have vivid memories of putting both my hands in a welding glove. My father would hold the welding hood as I tapped the rod against a piece of metal. The sparks would fly as I, a little boy, amused my father’s customers. I was welding for the public. Even though my father had the welding shop, we did not own the land. My mother worked at the cotton mill on the third shift. But it seemed as though we were blessed with a lot of work and a small amount of money. But why dwell on the past? Needless to say, I developed a strong work ethic. I finished high school with a farm boy’s education: that’s code for "I was as dumb as the dirt clods beneath my feet." I think they graduated me because they got tired of looking at me. Of course, I went to the local cotton mill. I did all their welding, finding my way into construction. In 1981 I was living in a man camp, building a plant on top of a mountain outside Evanston, Wyoming. I’ve worked out-of-the-way job sites all over Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Washington state, and way too many more to name. I have also worked several overseas jobs doing everything from boiler tubes and cross-country pipelines to nuclear power plants.
These were the times I started to ponder my own self-worth and to evaluate my human standing. I had worked a lot of construction and had done a lot of traveling, but I felt incomplete as a person. I had the smallest smattering of education. Sitting in an apartment in Salt Lake City, Utah, I decided to start reading--with more than a small amount of difficulty because I had never read a book in my life. But I would not give up. From early in the morning until late in the evening, I would sit and read. I became immersed in history and became a prolific reader. Then I decided to study the Bible. I got several different versions of the Bible and several books on the same timeline. It took an entire year to go through it from the first page to last, but I would not give up. Not giving up seems to be a running theme in my life. I started watching college classes on VHS and became very interested in a course on indoctrinating society—why we believe the things we do, and why we are lead to do them. That course set me to thinking about what I really did believe. More or less, what is really fact compared to what is simply perceived as being a fact? I pondered this for a long time and came up with my own hypotheses. I decided I would purge my mind and then take charge of it. I didn’t want to work construction anymore. Actually, I could care less about money. Not to say that I wouldn’t like the life money can bring, but I would not give up my dreams for it.
I guess that is what people call a "Catch-22": you wouldn’t give up your dreams, but what are they? I pondered this for a while. The only thing I ever wanted to do was to be a creator. I spent a lot of time in my life daydreaming about creating works of art. Not just for an afternoon, or even a day, but for days on end. Even for weeks at a time, I would construct things in my mind. Now I started to plot my life. I would go back to South Carolina and buy some land. I would build a welding shop. I would make myself learn how to build sculptures out of steel. I would listen to no one who told me I could not do it (and believe me, they were too numerous to count). I would put my creations in a room for five years--my "Five-year Plan." I would only bring in enough work to pay my bills. I would not advertise or ask for work. I would put every day (seven days a week, 12 hours a day) into my sculptures for five years. And I must say, it has been an agonizing five years. Many a day, I said I could not go on, and I would sit and cry. But I would not stop. Now at last, the five years are up. This web site is to see what you, the People, think. If no one likes my work, I will still do my sculptures; but I will sit down and re-evaluate my life again. But for now, I’m trying to write a book while working on my latest sculpture.
The Most Warmest Regards,
Russell Blackwell
