Metalworking with Santa Barbara Forge & Iron

Hey all! It's been quite a while since I've blogged. These past three to four weeks I've been swamped with resident assistant orientation at Westmont, but now that things are settling again I'll hopefully be able to resume with putting up blog posts here and there.

This post is a continuation of the photo project I was doing this summer (which you can read about in this post if you're interested). Santa Barbara Forge & Iron is a local business that I've come to be very impressed with recently. Joel Patterson, the Chief Operations Officer at SBFI, has been a great friend and mentor of mine for the past three or so years, so I asked him if I could do a feature on their business and ask a few questions about their work.

For those that'd like to know the technical details behind the photos, I was triggering three Nikon SB600s with the Pocketwizard MiniTT1/FlexTT5 system. Really love these triggers, especially when paired with the AC3 zone controller; you can adjust the power of your strobes from your camera instead of having to constantly walk back and forth between each flash unit...so helpful. Anyhow, on to the pictures and interview.



Production assistant Joy Brenneman puts the finished touches on an iron handrail.

Mark: Joel, tell me a bit about the creative minds behind SBFI. Your brother Dan started the business, is that right?

Joel: Yes. Dan was a sculpture major back at Hope College in Michigan. After college, he worked with a sculptor in Santa Barbara, and then later moved to New York City to work with a high-end furniture maker. He eventually admitted that metal was his first love and got his Masters from Transart Institute in Berlin (by this time he had already founded SBFI and the company was in full swing). My younger brother Andy has always been a true renaissance man, and a fantastic artist in his own right. He got on board a few years after the business started as SBFI's Chief Production Officer, and then spent some time apprenticing with a master forger in Baltimore before coming back to Santa Barbara with a whole new set of skills. The three Patterson brothers have always built things and have always fed each other's creativity. We work very well together.



Owner/CEO Dan Patterson threading the arms of a 1960s-influenced sputnik lamp.

Mark: Can you fill me in a little on the creative process behind your projects?

Joel: Usually a client comes in with an idea, anything from a scribbled drawing on a napkin to a picture they snapped while on vacation. We start by getting to know them, ask a lot of questions, and then begin to form a shared creative vision based on the client's personality, artistic sensibilities, and where the piece will be displayed. The process is very organic.



Mark: I hear there's some interesting history behind this shop and some of the machinery you use here. Can you tell me a bit about that?

Joel: Yes; the building we work in is the historic Craviotto Bros. Ironworking building, and has been a working shop of some sort since the 1920s. The Craviotto family is a wonderful local family with ironworking in their veins, and this location drips with history. It's something that you really have to experience firsthand - come by for our First Thursday Open House: 5:30pm to 9:00pm, every first Thursday of the month! We're right on the corner of Anacapa and Ortega in the middle of downtown Santa Barbara.



Mark: To end my post, I'd love to hear about this: what's the most outlandish/coolest project SBFI has ever worked on?

Joel: Well, there was this hand-forged goat head we made once for a person we strongly suspected of being a vampire...

:)

If you're interested in seeing some more of SBFI's work, check out their website at www.sbforge.com or their YouTube channel.