Have you ever heard the phrase, “to cut something like a hot knife through butter?” We often use it to refer to something as being easy. But what if we replaced butter with steel? And instead of a knife, it was a device that can reach 30,000 degrees. If steel is combined with those 30,000 degrees, the effect will be the same as if it was a hot knife through butter. Karman Rheault (ROW) has harnessed that intense heat and uses it to create artwork out of metal.
“It’s gonna be really bright, try not to look directly into it and it’s gonna spark a lot,” said Rheault before using a plasma cutter to slice through metal. Not only is the plasma cutter hot, it slices things rather quickly. “Yeah, it cuts really really fast,” she says.
30,000 degrees of heat can turn metal into anything an artist wants it to. Karman Rheault is an artist at her studio in Moorhead, Snow Fire Studio, and she primarily works with metal.
“The majority of my work is kinda wall hung three-dimensional sculptures,” she says. “I’ve had somebody describe it once as kind of a hybrid between painting and sculpture which I kind of agree with.”
Unless you’re a metal artist, Rheault’s studio is full of equipment that people have probably never used before.
“This where my big tools are,” Rheault says pointing to equipment in her studio. “This is my plasma cutter and my welder that I primarily use. I have two grinders with different heads on them depending on what I’m trying to do. And then I have big sheets of steel.”
Rheault puts on sunglasses to protect her eyes from the sparks as she prepares to slice some metal.
Step one: use the plasma cutter to cut out a shape in the metal. “I kinda call it drawing with fire actually,” she says.
Step two: Use the grinder to make the metal shiny. “See how that grinder really shines it up,” she says. “You can actually make some beautiful textures and designs with the grinder almost drawing in the metal with that as well.”
Step three: “Now if I went with a torch and heated that, you would still see these grind marks but it would be these beautiful iridescent colors,” she says.
For Rheault, the torch is kind of like a paintbrush. “Yes, exactly,” she says. “So it just adds some color.” And the color changes the longer metal is torched.
“You’ll first get like kind of a golden hue. The longer you hold it on it will change to a deep blue then a purple, then a light blue,” she says.
Rheault also says she has been an artist her entire life, however creating metal art is more recent for her.
“So I was primarily a painter, and another artist friend said hey this guy said he would teach us how to weld and plasma cut and I’ve always wanted to learn how to do that,” she says. “He, in about 2 hours, taught us the basic tools of the trade. The MIG welder, the plasma cutter, and by the end of the week I bought all the tools, I was totally on fire and self taught everything else.”
People who visit Rheault’s studio during the studio crawl will have the opportunity to see her demo her tools. “The plasma cutter for sure just because it’s such a cool tool that not everybody has access to,” she says.
The most impressive part about Rheault’s studio may be the fact she broke her dominant arm and is doing everything one handed. “I’m going to be doing everything left handed so cutting and welding, spot welding is gonna be tricky, but I’ll get it,” she says.
Not even a broken arm will prevent Rheault from dazzling studio crawlers with her metal artwork. If you want to see sparks fly then this is the place to be.
This story has been part of a preview for the 2016 Studio Crawl put on by the Fargo-Moorhead Visual Artists. Karman Rheault and other artists will open their studios to the public on October 1st and 2nd to showcase their art and how they create it.