Vintage steel makes unique art

Jenny Gowan cuts vintage steel — shovels, toolboxes, wheelbarrows, whatever she can get hold of — in her driveway, slicing out whatever metal she has to to leave her often nature-inspired designs, populated with trees and flowers, in the old tools.

The Bella Vista resident’s work is currently on sale at Velvet Otter in Eureka Springs, as well as the Wishing Spring Gallery here in Bella Vista. She’s also going to be selling her art at this fall’s Bella Vista Arts and Crafts Festival.

“I’ve always been sort of artsy,” she said. “My mom was an artist.” Her mother, she said, did calligraphy, photography, painting, pottery, illustration and gardening, to name a few things.

The gardening, Gowan said, may have been where her passion for flowers and the outdoors came from.

Additionally, she said, the old, rusty nature of a lot of the steel she works with adds a lot to the aesthetic, and it’s nice to recycle something that’s outlived its use.

She picks her metal up from flea markets, estate sales, auctions and the like, she said, and from there she comes up with a design and draws it on the piece to guide her plasma torch.

“It has to be real steel,” she said, “and the old steel is better because it doesn’t have all the added alloys, so it cuts better.”

Her husband, Jim Gowan, helps source materials. He said they have to be careful not to get any galvanized steel, because it can put out very dangerous fumes.

Cutting a work of art from an aging piece of steel, she said, can take anywhere from a couple hours to a couple of days.

“It’s messy work,” she said. “I usually wear boots and leather chaps, but I

burn through the leather. When an ember goes down into your shoe, you have to get it off.”

It’s not the worst idea, she said, to have an aloe plant handy.

Once the designs are cut, she said, she leaves whatever rust and marks are on the piece, but clear-coats it to keep it from rusting further, and prevent anyone from getting rust on themselves when handling it.

Her patterns often include flowers and trees, and she’s occasionally

done some mixed medium work — for instance, one of her carved-up shovels contained a piece of colorful glass, and she often takes advantage of existing color patterns, like the rust on a shovel or paint on a toolbox.

“I like sort of the softness of nature,” she said, “blended with the hardness of metal.”

Photo by Chris Tjepkema Jenny Gowan cuts a design into some vintage steel with her plasma cutter. She does this in the driveway, she said, because it makes a huge mess and spews fire all over.