“ReAssembled” from Evan Ballowe
I learned to weld while working for a coffee roastery in upstate NY, and started making metal sculptures as a way to improve my welding. We moved to Texas in the Summer of 2015 shortly after our son was born. When he started taking long afternoon naps, I would go out to our garage and run the welder as much as I could. In NY I had accumulated a small catalog of scrap metal and cast-off parts and practiced my welding by constructing new forms out of the preexisting shapes that I saw beauty in. The wide variety of materials in my stock quickly lent themselves to being assembled into shapes my wife would allow into the house. Because I’ve been largely self-taught in welding and fabricating, I’ve never had to stumble over being told not to try something because what I want to do won’t work. While this has often led to failure and frustration, more often it has catalyzed my art into unexpected directions. I work with all kinds of materials: metals, wood, glass, and stone; my only restraint being the materials I have on hand at the moment.
