I was delighted to learn that of the many artists who call Piedmont home, at least one of them is a professional blacksmith. In a world where we’ve become accustomed to having anything and everything delivered to our door, it’s easy to forget that there are real people out there making real stuff. And it doesn’t get more real than the age old technique of shaping metal in a 2000 degree forge. The very cool blacksmith artist doing this is Jill Turman, owner of Bella Ironworks in Alameda, California.
Now, it might have been some time since you’ve thought much at all about blacksmiths and what they do. Unless, of course, you are one of Turman’s son’s elementary school age friends, who are all big fans of “Forged in Fire”, a popular show on the History Channel featuring competitions recreating swords and other weapons. (And in case you’re wondering — no horses will be shod in this story — that’s a job for farriers, not blacksmiths.)
Turman, who graduated from Cal Poly with a degree in Landscape Architecture, detoured for a few years into the Los Angeles music business, managing booking logistics for artists such as George Michael and Megadeth.
Turman’s tools of the trade (photo credits: K.Korotzer)
However, missing the hands-on experience she’d had in glass blowing classes taken in high school and later at Cal Poly, Turman decided to return to school. At Cal State Northridge Turman earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Applied Fine Arts. It was there she found her true calling — behind the art building in the scrap metal yard, where in one of life’s serendipitous moments, a sculpture professor first showed her how to weld. As Turman describes it, this was the moment she fell in love with working with metal. She’s never left the proverbial yard since.
Turman’s company, Bella Ironworks, produces custom architectural metal work such as gates, railings, and furniture for residential and commercial projects, as well as public art installations. Turman is involved in every project, in every stage from hand drawing the initial concept sketches to hammering, welding and hand finishing the final piece.
Pieces from Bella Ironworks (photo credits: Jill Turman)
She is looking forward to a trip to Paris and Barcelona where, as she did in an earlier journey to Prague, she will fill her camera with images of doorknobs, awnings and railings to inspire her work. The curves of the Art Nouveau period are her favorite, and she is eager to see the work of Gaudi firsthand while in Barcelona.
But architectural metal projects require more than a love of the curve to be successful, a fact that Turman faced upon receiving her first public art commission in Memphis, Tenn. where she had moved as a young blacksmith. Home of the National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis was a friendly place for Turman to begin her blacksmithing career. Turman’s ambitious proposal for the Cooper-Young Trestle called for 8 tons of metal to span 150’ of an abandoned railway trestle. The finished installation would be warm and welcoming and an important part of the revitalization of it’s neighborhood, and building it would also call on Turman’s left-brain skills. Not one to shy away from a challenge, Turman pulled out her college geometry book and brushed up on the x/y coordinates and the meaning of slope, skills that are now second nature.
See what Turman brings to her work in the video above from her studio, www.bellaironworks.com/.
Turman, who grew up in neighboring Orinda, credits her mother with kickstarting her penchant for making things and for instilling in her a positive attitude. As a child Turman and her mother would be inspired to make the things they saw on store shelves. Eying something appealing, her mother’s refrain was “We can make one!” This led to experiments with painting, ceramics, clay and glass fusing.
Turman doesn’t rule out becoming a metal instructor someday when she is not so busy running a full time shop and being a mother herself (her son is a student at Beach school which means volunteer stints with the Beach Revue). She says that she identifies with learners, and adds that what she loves about working with metal is that the material is not precious — rather “it is what I put [into it] that makes it special.”