Craft Punk

Artist Anne Bujold — a SIBs’ co-founder and organizer who partook in the inaugural bench project — recalls that the group gathered in Cascadia, “not with the intention that we were going to start an organization... We just wanted to get together with these women blacksmiths and, like, talk about stuff.” The collaborative environment that emerged during the bench build was testament to the importance of creating safe spaces in blacksmithing, and galvanized the organizers to keep the momentum going. Bujold notes that the women all had “different experiences with being sexualized, talked down to, ignored, or patronized,” and the coeval summer of #MeToo made it clear that it was time to push back and make change in their field. “I kind of had this realization that no one's gonna open the doors for us, and people don't even know we exist as women blacksmiths,” says Bujold. Geertsen concurs, noting that “each of us in our own pockets of the world had tried to make little bits of difference, talking to boards of different local blacksmith groups.” Some of these groups were open to new ideas, but more often the response was one of defensiveness and dismissal. “So, basically, we got a little bit fed up, and as we know, if you want to see stuff change, you just get up and start doing it yourself.”

A social scientist before she pursued a career in the arts, Bujold believed a diversity of perspective would lead to an overall stronger metalsmithing community. Making space for women’s voices and experiences was just one door opening, and could illuminate other barriers that had yet to be identified. Geertsen describes how SIBs continued to evolve. “What started out as, ‘we barely see enough women at these things,’ turned into, ‘well, yeah, we don't see any people of color at these events either, or folks who are coming forward with a disability or that are LGBTQ or trans.’” To members of Society of Inclusive Blacksmiths, inclusion means making space for underrepresented makers, but also expanding blacksmithing to incorporate criticality and a diversity of materials. Bujold attributes the lack of comfort with conceptual projects in her field to the fact that there are only two Masters of Fine Arts granting programs within the United States. The majority of spaces where emerging smiths can learn their hand skills are focused on tradition and technique, and are dismissive of approaches which explore abstraction or whimsy. In her sculpture Flamingo A-Go-Go from 2017, she included feathers and pearls with a forged flamingo to talk about the lack of women in her field, only to have her (male) peers completely miss the point of the piece.

With the founders all having busy lives, careers and individual artistic practices to care for, SIBs was slow to coalesce into its current day form. From 2018 to 2021, the ideas of what to do with SIBs percolated while pandemics and movements upended social norms. Today, the non-hierarchical organization relies upon a governance committee to distribute its resources, namely, an online mentorship program, scholarships for underrepresented identities in the metals fields, opportunity sharing for fellow blacksmiths and metalsmiths, and grants. Given the importance of in-person events to keep collaborative momentum going, those remain a high priority for future planning, with a national collaborative event in progress in the summer of 2025. Such events are challenging to plan without staff or executive leadership, but this allows all of the organization’s fundraising to go towards programs and projects rather than paying for organizational administration. This absence of hierarchy is a core belief for Geertsen, who calls it an “anarchist mission of mine. When you think about what it means to be punk, you don't have to wear chains and mohawks. Going against the flow is pretty punk, too.”

One key strength of grassroots style governance is that anyone with a passion project is able to run with it and lean on the collective’s resources to take it where it needs to go. Smiths for the Promotion of Accessibility, Representation and Community, for example, is a SIBs offshoot devoted to increasing the representation of BIPOC makers in metals while also uniting the fine jewelry and blacksmithing spheres. Funlola Coker, a Nigerian metalsmith and one of the 12 current co-leaders* of the initiative, loves that SPARC bridges that manufactured division. “Jeweler, metalsmith, blacksmith, welder — I love all of it, and SPARC’s co-founders have all come together because of metal. There are things that you can learn from each other, with some being in the trades or being based in a studio or being a contemporary artist. When the crossover happens, people understand each other better, they talk about different things, because they live such different lives. When we talk together and do things together and learn about each other's experiences, we're a little bit more sympathetic to each other.”

In describing those moments of community, Coker uncannily echoes the experience Lisa Geertsen and Anne Bujold described during the first in-person SIBs meeting. In 2024, SPARC organized a gathering at the Steelyards in Providence, Rhode Island which brought a group of BIPOC metalsmiths together to work and network, share ideas and time and meals. Working for the first time in a space in which being Black was the norm and not the exception was transformative for Coker. “It frees up your mind, to be able to learn something with your whole body and your whole soul,” she says. “When you're uncomfortable, when you feel constrained, you're not able to focus on much else except being uncomfortable, so you absorb information differently. For me, that's the biggest thing — being able to experience a variety of stories and world views and learn in a place that feels comfortable.”

In addition to prioritizing in-person events, SPARC is developing an ‘inclusive metals pedagogy,’ so that a teaching philosophy which promotes welcoming educational spaces for makers of color and other historically marginalized folks can spread throughout institutions and communities. Those who have been SPARC-qualified — Coker says — will become ‘SPARClings,’ ready to share their sparkle and light fires of belonging and access in their own communities.