SINCE 1693, when Bernardino de Sena moved to Pojoaque to become Santa Fe’s first blacksmith, metalworking here has been a decidedly male profession. Almost 200 years after de Sena first arrived on the scene, Frank Turley opened his Turley Forge Blacksmithing School. Several of his graduates have settled along Siler Road, but one went further south. Christin Boyd’s Flygirl Iron is just outside Madrid, at the foot of the Ortiz and up a bone-rattling mountain road.
I wasn’t allowed to take shop classes in high school…had to take home economics. I worked in clay for a while, but I tend to drop things, so needed something sturdier. When I got to college, I became interested in metal-working classes, but it was intimidating. There were lots of men, and it felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there. So I didn’t go, but the interest…it was always there.
When I moved to New Mexico, that’s when I started with metal. I met and worked with Janey Katz, a metal sculptor in Galisteo. Then I took Frank Turley’s blacksmithing course in Santa Fe and fell in love. Very much so, actually. The heat. The fire. The metal. The hammering. All of it just spoke to me in a deep way. I hadn’t had any other medium get under my skin like that.
I’m sort of an anomaly in the blacksmithing world. Look at me! I’m small and female. I don’t look the part. I mean, I wear steel-toed boots and my clothes are always dirty, but if you see me, it’s not going to be immediately assumed that I’m capable of doing what I’m capable of doing.
There’s a lot of strength involved, but it’s endurance strength. It’s holding a hammer and using it for hours and hours. But many times, you’re hitting softly. It’s a lot of finesse.
The way living things work has always fascinated me. I like to take the metal and make it look organic. When I first started working with metal, I discovered that when you heat it up, it moves, like clay. You can form it and shape it any way. And the more organic you make it, the more amazing it is. Taking a stiff, straight, solid thing and making it flow is what is inspired me about blacksmithing. You make it alive.
When you create a gate or railing, there are certain set parameters…things that need to be precise and specific so that everything is structurally sound. But within that framework there’s a field of absolute openness for creativity. A blank canvas, and my favorite thing to do is make something live on that canvas…something metal that moves and looks like it just grew there.
I learned to make metal roses from Helmut Hillenkamp, one of my mentors. He came up with this method of creating a rose out of a single piece of metal. While I was apprenticing with him I made about 300 of them. I got pretty good at it.
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