The Art of Welding Exhibition

The Art of Welding is the installment where Artists from across the Midwest were invited to submit work that either employed the tools of industry or expressed thematic connections to welding and industrial craft.

Shelley Novotny’s selected work, Modern-Day Alchemist: The Dual Masks, reimagines vintage welding masks as mythic artifacts of transformation. Using rusted metal fragments, natural relics, recycled materials, and fire-altered finishes, the pieces explore the sacred balance of Masculine and Feminine archetypal forces.

The work merges industrial labor with spiritual symbolism — honoring the forge as both physical and inner site of becoming.