Joel Sanderson

PORTALS LTD

CHICAGO

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JOEL SANDERSON

Joel Sanderson has been creating beauty with iron all his life. Through a life-long fascination for the working of hot iron, he has developed unique methods of manipulation for this age-old medium. Working in a facility equipped with belt driven machinery over a hundred years old,
Joel has combined the most successful methods of the past with new inventive approaches for working iron, the most versatile of all material.
Joel's career began when he was thirteen years old, when he overhauled his great grandfather's 19th century forge and first actively pursued his
curiosity for hot metal. Every free day, every available evening, Joel was found by the forge fire, heating iron, experimenting, learning. Even during
his college years, when he was briefly distracted by a teaching career, Joel spent all the time he could learning to form metal: metallurgy and jewelry
in the classroom, weekends and vacation by the fire. In 1993, Joel decided to abandon all other distractions and pursue his
dream with all of his energy. Over the next five years, Joel strengthened the foundation of his education: he began a part-time bladesmithing
business, he worked as assistant blacksmith for Black Swamp Forge in Ohio, and then he worked as machinist and die maker for Arrowsmith Forge in New York. During this period, Joel was exposed to many aspects of metalworking, furthering his education and providing a firm foundation on which his
understanding of metal has been built. Returning to his home studio in 1998, Joel began a nation-wide search for rare 19th and early 20th century metalworking machines which would enable the realization of his artistic vision. His studio now contains more than a dozen machines over a century old, several of which are sole survivors from a past era. These rare machines allow expression in metal not possible in any other studio in America. Through the use of this unique mechanical vocabulary, Joel Sanderson creates works of unprecedented form and beauty and has become a leader in his medium.

“When we look at a work of art, we see the object, but we also see what it means to us. This meaning is a compilation of conscious and subconscious memories which are assembled into a new idea, thought or experience. This intangible image, sometimes moving, sometimes stationary, sometimes pleasant, other times gruesome, is the quality I work to develop in my sculptures because this is what makes a work of art an experience. An experience is something happening and something happening is a journey, and a journey is made by things which are alive; in iron this can only happen because we are shown something which isn’t there. As the craftsman develops, he learns the true capabilities of the material. It is this love of what can be done with the material and the process used in manipulating it that results in the visible tracks from the artist’s tools. The difference between what the skilled craftsman knows of his medium and what the audience thinks it knows is the realm in which the seemingly impossible may be achieved.”

-Joel Sanderson