A Passion Forged in Fire
Alon Fainstein’s blacksmith journey began in 1995 when he learned how to weld and craft steel furniture. The experience sparked an interest in metalworking, but how he viewed the medium changed when he was introduced to a seasoned blacksmith.
“The second I walked into the workshop of an elderly Italian blacksmith, it struck me that this was the medium I was destined to work with. I learned that, when this stubborn material is heated, I can manipulate it into whatever my imagination renders,” Fainstein says.
Fainstein’s artistic roots run deep. As an introverted young boy, the art room in a Cape Town junior school was the only place where he felt that he fit in. His teacher recognised that he had a unique talent and gave him the freedom to create his own work, while the rest of the class was restricted to the curriculum.
“My parents understood and supported my gravitation towards art. I painted for hours on end and loved ceramics. Even when my mom arranged play dates, I would lock myself in my room away from the world so that I could create art. Outside of that environment, I felt like a fish out of water. It was the only thing that really made sense to me and it was liberating, even at a young age,” Fainstein says.
Fainstein went on to study graphic design after high school, but he was never really turned on by the industry and realised it wasn’t something he wanted to pursue as a career. He landed a job at a company that made steel furniture and his journey of learning his trade began. This, along with self-teaching his way through books, shaped Fainstein into the blacksmith artist that he is today. “When I began learning this new and intriguing material, it seemed impossible to work with, but I gradually discovered that being totally present in the moment and making mistakes were my best teachers. I began to notice everything about how the metal reacted when worked on, which led to endless discoveries.”
After creating traditional steelworks for over 15 years, Fainstein realised that something was missing. The artistic freedom he experienced all those years ago was what he needed to rekindle to express himself. “It felt like something was gnawing at me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Creating my own works from the inspiration that lay deep within me was artistically liberating. I could listen to my inner voice rather than shaping something according to a client’s specific brief. I was beckoning for something more, something completely different, a different way of working, creating and manifesting authentic inspiration,” Fainstein says.
This reawakening inspired him to build his own studio which supported the scale of his work, but more importantly, in which he could immerse himself and fill with his creative energy. It was a space in which he connected with the medium and his true self on a different level, and went on to create some of his finest pieces.
By using age-old blacksmithing techniques that he had learned over the years, he created Willow, a sculpture named after his daughter, who’d been the inspiration for the work. It also led to the creation of the first piece of his first solo exhibition: a chair, aptly named, Connect. “In this beautiful domain of the unknown, I found my biggest inspiration – it was unlearning everything I had learned up until this point, giving up control and letting the work guide me. As I moved the tool across the material, I began to notice the texture being created and when changing the way I moved the tool, I noticed how the texture changed and how the steel reacted,” Fainstein concludes.
Fainstein is also one of Wixworth Gin’s “Classics”. Wixworth prides itself on being authentic and staying true to oneself, to one’s passion, and to one’s way of life, and is building a community of classics, with the likes of Fainstein, who share the same ethos. For more information, please visit www.wixworth.com/be-a-classic/.
For more information on Alon Fainstein's work, please visit www.alonfainstein.co.za.