AmyMKupferberg.com is a fine art website offering drawings made with an Mig Welder
While fabricating an armature for another sculpture, I became intoxicated by the beauty and grace created from arc welding. In order to fabricate the armature to an exact likeness, I bent the steel and clamped it down directly on top of a drawing of the armature and welded the steel at the cross points. When I lifted the armature up and saw the marks that were left on the paper, I knew that something important had happened. I was fascinated by the traces of light and the activity of the electrodes that usually go unseen by the naked eye. For me, these drawings capture evidence of the sublime and uncover its truths.
With humility, I place sheets of paper on my steel table, construct the grid structure, and then ceremoniously pull an actual trigger. An electrified copper wire is fed from the tip of the welding gun, and as the wire touches the steel, an electrical arc occurs, producing enough heat to fuse the steel together. A fire is started with each weld; each is an offering intended to uncover another beautiful truth. I layer the paper to create more depth; the top sheet is an artifact of the process documenting the destruction of my materials. I regard the sheets beneath as fossils, as versions of the incandescent event. Each sheet is thus a remembrance, and layer by layer, as the imprint fades, there is the promise of transcendence.
Amy M Kupferberg lives and works in New York.
