⚜️ UNDERSTORY: The idea for Fire+Steel began with my gouache paintings. I found myself wondering what some of those same designs would look like translated into woodburning — stripped of color and rendered instead through fire, texture, and the natural warmth of wood.
Then came a familiar dilemma: should I burn the design itself, or the space around it? Unable to choose, I decided to do both.
My original plan was to mount the finished birch panels simply, without frames. But something never felt quite right. They lacked the presence of my woodburns made on natural slabs, and for several weeks I kept turning the problem over in my mind without finding the answer.
Then one evening, while washing dishes, I happened to glance at a set of forged steel brackets I had bought for a floating shelf. And suddenly I could see it: A dark, handforged steel surround would give the pale birch exactly the weight and structure it needed. Better yet, my husband already had a welder, grinders, a vise, and most of the other bits and bobs required to make the idea possible.
It took several more weeks to work out the details, including finding a local source for the steel I had envisioned. But when the first piece finally came together, it exceeded what I had imagined.
The result felt like a natural marriage of three wonderfully primal materials: wood, fire, and steel — each leaving its own unmistakable mark on the finished work.
