Steve Bush sees the potential for art everywhere – on garages, stairways, in expansive fields and even holding up mailboxes.
The Blacklick resident’s welded art ranges from dramatic stand-alone sculptures to pieces designed to function within the home. All of his work is impressive, both structurally and artistically. Bush handles the welder with authority and care, infusing his work with a subtle sense of ease and a dash of good humor.
“You can just as soon make a dining room table artistic and cool as you can a sculpture,” Bush says. “People need functional things in their life,” so he finds ways to introduce art to everyday objects, like his stair railings that have become so popular in homes all over Columbus.
His stand-alone sculptures play with balance while offering a chance to expand the narrative of materials and form. “I like to tell a story,” Bush says.
Bush learned to weld when he was young. His father, grandfather and uncle were structural steel ironworkers who worked on skyscrapers and taught him the basics. Bush knew at an early age that he wanted to become an artist, so he studied first at the Pennsylvania Institute of Art, then transferred to the Columbus College of Art and Design.
For a while, he struggled to find his niche. He finally realized why steel was the medium chosen for him by his father and grandfather.
“I wasn’t a realistic painter, I was a builder,” Bush says. “I’m a builder of things.”
While he was still in college, Katherine LeVeque commissioned Bush to make a scale replica of the LeVeque Tower for her office.
After graduation, Bush spent many years in fabrication shops in and around Columbus to learn how to make the designs and ideas he had in his head. The experience taught him how to work with a wide range of materials and “how to make things square, straight and level, and I just had to put the art twist onto it.” An apprenticeship with a jeweler gave him the confidence to make anything from earrings to 15-foot-tall metal gates.
When his two sons were born, Bush made the decision to stay at home to care for them. He welded at night after his wife, Theresa, came home from work. His garage became the smARTworks studio. He uses both Mig and Tig welders to transform huge sheets of steel into gates, birds, abstract forms and even flowers.
Sixteen years after college, Bush’s one-of-a-kind blend of art and function has paid off. He spends half his time working on sculptures and the other half working on railings and other functional pieces for the home. He feels that all of his childhood training and artistic education has finally “fallen into place where it’s supposed to be.”
No matter what he builds, he makes sure every piece is structurally sound – with a lifetime guarantee – while pleasing the eye with unusual touches here and there. Whether holding onto his one-of-a-kind railings or marveling at five-foot-tall steel daylilies, the precision and grace of his work is spectacular.
Cindy Gaillard is the Executive Producer of WOSU Public Media’s Emmy Award-winning program ArtZine. Find new episodes on Facebook.
