the forge
I was quite young and don’t remember his name, but images of his labors still fire my memory. His sooty, sweat-streaked face glowed beneath an ever present paper-sack hat while he pumped the bellows by foot and hammered rhythmically at blobs of glowing metal, pausing only to plunge them, tongs and all, into the water filled wooden half barrel. Smoke and steam sputtered and swirled as sparks flew. I remember the colors of coals and metal as they were fired and cooled, reds pinks, blues, yellows all emphasized by the surrounding darkness in his shed. With this series, I have tried to capture that memory with images of objects transmuted through the alchemy of “a left handed view”