Metalworker Steve Joslyn sees beauty in every spark. His true passion is large-scale, intricate ironwork, but his artistic journey started with something much smaller.
He was pursuing a BFA in jewelry at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1970s and was destined to become a fine jeweler, until he had his first taste of working with metal in an unassuming classroom.
“I remember sitting down and starting, and then looking up and hearing the bell ring. Three hours had gone by in an instant,” he says. “I was so absorbed that time literally just stopped.”
Next he learned how to master the extreme heat of hot forged iron. He was drawn to the humble tools that could bend steel to his will, as well as the physicality of working with his entire body.
“I really liked the basic elements that were involved — working with the fire and the coal.”
Joslyn would later become an apprentice, gradually gathering his own traditional implements: anvils, forges, and hand tools.
When the sterling-silver market spiked in the early ’80s, he realized that being a jeweler wasn’t feasible for a struggling college student. Joslyn says it was creatively prohibitive to work with such expensive metals, and he saw the appeal of working with inexpensive steel.
“You could go to the scrapyard and fill your trunk full of stuff,” he recalls. “All you need to do is just start to practice; just start to play.”
He felt freed from the confines of jewelry and joined the nascent blacksmithing renaissance. Using steel as an outlet for creative expression was a relatively new concept that had few disciples. The market was ripe for a skilled blacksmith.
“This is an old art and it’s been around a really long time, but the truth is, no one was doing it,” Joslyn recalls.
His business flourished. He made chandeliers, pendants, and fireplace tools for grand vacation homes in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. He built a stunning three-story steel mobile for the 1980 winter Olympics. He created custom work, including furniture, that brought him recognition and accolades. From 1985 to 1992, he had a shop in Syracuse, then moved his operation to a rural farm in a nearby county.
But in 2008, the market shifted. The national recession meant fewer people could afford second homes or investment properties, and those who could steered away from artistic embellishments. He closed his doors in 2012 to pursue corporate projects. Yet he yearned for a way to share the metalwork that stirred his soul and regain the independence of owning his own business.
Joslyn scoured the country to find a region that was thriving economically and had an appreciation for functional art. He was also eager to trade brutal upstate NY winters for mild south-mountain air.
So, a year ago, he packed up a tractor-trailer piled high with heavy tools and equipment and drove south to Arden. Joslyn’s vision for fine metalwork that revealed the complexities of nature found a home in Western North Carolina.
The pinecones and intertwining branches that grace his current project — a 300-pound chandelier — are so delicate they could be made from icicles. Thousands of steel pine needles emerge from branches slim enough to resemble a sapling yet massive enough to evoke a mighty forest.
Custom pieces like this propel his current business Joslyn Fine Metalwork and put his work in the spotlight of magazines like Architectural Digest. But it’s the artistic process itself that brings out his primal appreciation for the act of forging steel. He says he feels a sense of awe when he puts the steel in his gas forge and watches the color change from gray to bright yellow.
“The steel has an organic quality when it’s hot,” he says. “It does these wonderful soft, curvy lines because it’s soft like warm clay. It kind of arcs and lends itself to natural forms.”
He is inspired by the forest and is moved to capture the stunning simplicity of trees and branches on a cellular level. Metalwork lends itself to precise yet unpredictable outcomes, much like nature itself.
This transformative process drives Joslyn when he stands in front of his forge. He describes forging steel as an exercise in controlled spontaneity.
“It’s hot, it’s noisy and it’s incredibly invigorating,” he says.
The steel stretches and moves with every hammer blow, forcing him to be completely absorbed in the moment. If he looks up or allows time to slip away, the material can change in an instant. He must harness his creative spark and translate it into art in just a few fleeting seconds.
“You’re almost like a little machine with a soul,” he says. “It’s you and the hammer and the hot steel.”
Visit www.facebook.com/usblacksmith to learn more about Steve Joslyn.