If the form is strong enough and the weld is good, all you need is a wire brush to clean it.
It’s not so much that he know what he likes. It’s more that he knows what he doesn’t like. If it doesn’t look right – feel right – then it has to be changed. He says it’s still intuition because it was intuition to know that he didn’t like something.
“It’s trial and error when you hit it,” said Artist and Owner of Cooper Ingenuity Ryan McDanel. “When you like it, you know you like it, then you stick with it.”
McDanel started working with metal his senior year at Anderson University in Anderson, Ind., where he earned his bachelors degree of fine arts in glass blowing. His work will be on display at the Arts Council of Wyoming County art gallery, Main Street, Perry.
“Then I applied to grad schools thinking that I was the greatest thing that walked the planet and got humbled real quick when I got rejected from all three schools I applied to,” McDanel said. “You don't become a glass blower in four years of art education. The bachelors degree is where you find out who you really are; the masters degree is when you apply your skill. But don't tell a 22-year-old kid that cause he's about to conquer the world and sweep the art nation.”
And that’s when he stopped doing art – after he was denied entry from those three schools. Feeling like a failure, he ended up working at a Starbucks – “like every other art major.” He also ended up teaching English in China and South Korea.
“I got a whole lot of life experience, but nothing to do with art and when I met my wife she knew I was an artist. A year and a half into our relationship I said to her ‘I'm not going to be a good father or husband if I'm miserable working at jobs that I hate. I need to at least try, so I don't regret not trying.’ And it isn't a regret yet because I'm still alive. And then I bought a welder and bought some steel and created my first piece after a 10-year hiatus from the art world.”
McDanel started his business, Cooper ingenuity, two years ago this month and says it’s been a phenomenal ride. While he began his artistic journey as a glass blower, he nixed the idea after he found that he really wasn’t “good” at it and it was a partner process. Working alone with metal allowed him to be in the “zone” alone.
“It's hard to come down from the high of creating and get back to the real world. When I’m in the zone, I’m thinking but not thinking. I have to come back to reality before I can interact with others.
“What people may not see about artists is that we make a lot of crap. To get the one good one, there's a lot of bad ones and the object to me was never worth...I am always in my own head, so when I'm making my art I'm not thinking about anything. And that's the zone that musicians call – that's called living in the moment exclusively. You can't stay there forever. You'd be insane to say that you don't care about anything or anyone around you. I care. I'm a loving person, but when I'm isolated in my own studio doing my own thing... that's how I recharge. So I need to create everyday, which ultimately makes me happier, which makes me a better friend, a better husband, a better father.”
The Perry resident said college was a blessing.
“Imagine having eight to 10 to 12 hours a day to discover what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. I had all the time in the world to study what it was I wanted to do. For an artist it may be a little more fun than an accountant, but I still had all the time in the world.”
To McDanel, it was like a job. If he wanted to stay in the art building and make stuff, he could. And then he’d just remember: Maybe it's not everyone that can do that – that investing and creating something. It's that process that I loved. It didn't matter if I was practicing how to blow out a plate or to run out a nice bead on a weld. It was that process that I was after. The object for me meant nothing.
McDanel works with both metal and wood, saying the wood warms up the coldness of the steel, balances the beauty, softening the piece up a bit.
“I go through different cycles in my work: functional art, table lamps and such; metal for metal's sake, non representational; a series of animals and faces and little old men.”
But it was the large outdoor sculptures that took on a whole new realm for him. It opened up a gate when he made something human size or “bigger than yourself.”
“A lot of people say my work looks musical. There is a lyrical musical quality to what I do. My mother's a music teacher and my father’s an artist, so I say I'm the combination of that. Although, I'm not a musician.”
McDanel names the pieces after he creates them because he doesn’t have a drawing to start with. When he is making a piece, he goes through the steel he has, picks out what he likes and then sees how they will work together. In one piece he calls Guardian, he sees a masculine form and a dainty, petite, feminine form with the male protecting or being the “guardian” of the female.
“It means no more than that. I'm not trying to tell a story with this but this is what I saw.”
The artist doesn’t always like to explain his titles because when someone comes up and sees "guardian" then they don't know the story and it doesn't matter. It's how someone perceives the piece to be. Even placement of the object changes the perception of how the piece is viewed.
“I created this piece at eye level. Then you can see more of what I saw. It gives you a different perspective. At what ever level I create a piece, that is how the piece is meant to be seen.”
When McDanel first started learning how to weld, he would go to the scrapyard and buy different geometric shapes. He’d bring his bounty to the art building and sit there putting pieces together. But it wasn’t just putting the pieces together, it was making them look good in the process.
“And it happened... That was the dance. That was the ‘I'm going to sit here all night’ – and it was usually Friday nights because no one was in the art building Friday nights – ‘and come out Saturday morning with all sorts of conglomerate metal put together.’ That's how I used to work.”
Now when he works, he at least has an idea of what he wants to do.
“I wanted to make a garden piece that was going to be a man. And when I was finished, I didn't know it was going to look like that (pointing to the friar sculpture), I just had an idea of what I wanted to do. Parts of it were an accident, but everything just kind of came together.”
And in art, there are a lot of “happy accidents,” like the 10-foot horse McDanel made when he started out sculpting a lady sitting in a yoga pose.
“I don't even know if I was even going for that, but as I started building, that's what I saw. And then when I put it upright I said, ‘I wonder if I could make a horse head?’ And then you have to add stuff: ‘Oh I need a tail.’ So here you've got the tail (points). And I love to do hair because it's all crazy and wild. So then I said ‘I need a mane.’ Then I decided I needed the hooves... I had no idea I wanted to create a 10-foot horse. I just started putting really big pieces together thinking I was going to get a big outdoor sculpture and it ended up being a horse. Halfway through it just kind of clicked, and it was ‘that's the direction I'm going to go.’ And then I'm going to push that....”
However, if he has to force it, he is never happy with the result. While he creates for creations sake – the process that keeps him “sane” – he also does quite a bit of commission work. One client came in and said they wanted a dolphin. McDanel made a seven-foot long by eight-foot high steel creation. It is currently placed on the property of “one of the forts” near Tampa, Fla..
“I made a piece for a woman who said ‘I'm turning 70 years old. I do yoga three times a week. It's a celebration and I want the fluidity like a yoga pose, but I want it abstract for my backyard garden.’ That I can run with, and she loved it. When you have a client that wants to commission a piece you get a feel of them when you talk to them, see their house. There are little context clues that you're picking up even though you don't even know you're picking them up. So I knew what she was looking for.”
While he typically creates one-of-a-kind pieces, The Mallory Flower is the one exception:
My wife and I found out she was pregnant and we found out at 19 weeks that our daughter was going to have a heart defect. So I made a heart in a very cathartic way to show her defect - most people have four chambers in their heart, she only has three. From this whole heart shape I developed a fund raiser to help offset the cost of her medical expenses, and created the Mallory Flower, which can be used indoors or outdoors.
Sometimes he does things as a challenge, like with the flowers.
“Can I make steel look like a cala lily? It's easier to make petals to look like a flower then to bend metal to look like a cala lily.”
All the steel McDanel works with is hand bent using a vice, cylinders and his weight. While the process may limit his work, he likes creating from his own strength. He also uses mostly new steel, saying using reclaimed metal just “got frustrating.” As soon as a metal artist incorporates reclaimed metal into their piece, they are put into a different category of metal artist called “found art.” Much like a painter who prefers oils over watercolors, each metal artist has their own preference.
“I use five inch angle grinder. That's how I paint. The grinding is what the love affair is with the material. Even though a design can be simple in its appearance, the creation of it is intricate. I've never been stronger in my life than I was last summer when I was making all these giant art things. When you make something bigger than yourself it's sort of surreal.”
McDanel and his “very understanding wife” Kimmie have been married almost five years and have a daughter named Mallory Ryan.
To see more of his pieces visit https://www.etsy.com/shop/cooperingenuity or http://web.wycochamber.org/Arts,-Culture-and-Entertainment/Cooper-Ingenuity-1223
