“I hit, beat, torture, manipulate, crush, squeeze, twist, punch holes in and hammer all those pieces of metal into shape,” said Evan Wilson, artist and blacksmith.
This is how he turns copper, bronze, iron and steel into furniture and firepits, leaves, berries, wings and hands, and, sometimes, the body of Jesus.
“It’s a mixture of brute force and finesse,” he said.
Wilson, 37, said his work is an emotional experience, and sometimes a spiritual revelation.
“For me, it’s become a way of understanding my own, and our universal, coming back to God. Of relating to the God who calls us to suffer and to grow,” he said.
At times he’s focused on being the smith who shapes the metal, but other times he feels more like the thing being shaped.
“I hit this material like I mean it. I really clobber it. But every hammer blow is at just the right angle, just the right amount, the right temperature, the right location,” he said.
What he’s doing is bringing about a “loving transformation.”
“But from the perspective of the metal, it’s like ‘Oh my God, stop beating me!’” he said.
Wilson isn’t just using his artistic imagination; he has lived it.
Wilson was received into the Eastern Orthodox church in 2023, but was raised evangelical Protestant. Wilson was all of 7 years old when he began to note the logical inconsistencies of a “sola scriptura” approach to doctrine. As he grew, he kept finding more questions than anyone in his community could answer, and the faith of his childhood had less and less of a grip on him.
“It left me with a lot of angst,” he said. “I never threw away Christ, but I always wanted to figure out what the deeper value of this story was.”
As an adult, seeking a life of meaning, he spent time in Afghanistan working for a nonprofit that taught literacy and offered pregnancy care.
“I lived in a mud hut with an ex-Taliban member, had a dog, rode my bike to work. It was an awesome time, but very difficult to reconcile the God I was told about as a child with what was occurring there,” he said.
He saw so many people, especially women and children, who seemed trapped and forgotten.
When Wilson returned to the United States, he took up with Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a nonprofit that serves the homeless in Austin, Texas.
“I could tell there was something embodied or incarnate in the faith that was in action there,” he said.
That something wasn’t picturesque. He recalls working surrounded with what founder Alan Graham called “the bouquet of Christ,” the aroma of incontinent and unbathed bodies, and crack smoke.
“We served them as we serve Christ,” he said.
Wilson still struggled with his faith, but Loaves and Fishes is where he began to use his hands. He ran a workshop teaching the homeless to build wooden bird houses and tree swings, so they could have some shot at supporting themselves. His program invited journeymen to come and host workshops, and this included a dozen master blacksmiths from around the world.
“They were super generous, and I learned a ton,” he said.
That is when blacksmithing began to compel him, and it eventually became his main focus. It was not a smooth or graceful transition.
“My wife and I had our first son in 2020, I lost my job, and I got my first commission all in the same year,” he said.
That first commission was a Stations of the Cross. He calls it the beginning of his salvation, as he carefully crafted the tiny bodies acting out the suffering and death of Christ.
He first made the figures out of plasticine clay and shaped them with wooden replicas of his smith tools, to make sure he’d be able to form them from metal without using his hands. He literally wrestled with the little bodies as he worked.
“Pushing Christ’s arm just so, not thinking but feeling that; the tilt of the head here, the Roman soldier hammering the nails in. That’s how I was converted,” he said…. Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor.
Image: Evan Wilson in his studio with the Face of Christ (Mandylion) in chased bronze
Note: I’m expanding the scope of this monthly artist feature! If you know of a Catholic musician, composer, dancer, or other contributor to the arts who has an interesting story to tell, let me know. Shoot an email to simchafisher at gmail dot com. Thanks!
