I just found out about this place today. Greatest thing ever, right? Possibly, very possibly. It’s the only museum of its kind in the entire country. They seem to really focus on forging and casting, which is a bit of a bummer for a guy like myself, but it’s still incredibly cool!

I will spare you the words. You can check out this very nifty video:

In case you’re wondering, it is a seven hour and fifty-two minute drive from the door of my house to this magnificent repository of ferrous fantasticness (okay, they do non-ferrous stuff too, but I’m taking poetic license) in Memphis, Tennessee. Aaaanyway, I found out about this place today while hunting around for all kinds of things about metal working and metal fabrication, and I was really just thrown. You should check out the part at the beginning where they show off the gates to the museum grounds – so many cool little highlights!

It just looks so cool. The woman featured in the video is a student there, I guess an intern at the time it was filmed, and she’s just so jazzed about the whole thing. It’s infectious! I want to go! How do I enter? Where do I sign up? Do I have to sell my home? No problem! Sell my car once I get there? Okay! Live on macaroni and cheese for an entire year? Sounds great!

Seriously, dudes, there’s something wrong with me. I’ve been looking up metalsmithing, metal working, metal crafting, machining, and I’m dreaming of this awesome shop with, like, four bench grinders and a mill and a lathe and MIG, TIG, stick, and gas welders, and presses and punches and drills and….

*sigh* This is so weird, so very weird.

Here, here’s another video about what they call “Repair Days” where the museum calls in craftsmen and women from all over the world, and you just show up with your broken awesome stuff, and they fix it for you – fixed by some of the greatest artists in the world! This is so cool!

I wanna go. I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna go. NOW!

Here’s a short piece highlighting Mary Catherine (whose name I may be misspelling, because the folks who added the videos keep changing it up):

I’m envious of how happy and excited she is here. I want to feel that way about something like that! I’d absolutely LOVE to be immersed in the learning process like that. How…how do you make that happen? I haven’t seen anything like that for the kind of stuff I like to do, at least not yet. I guess I’m looking for it. It’s an odd branch of study, but I suppose if you look for anything long enough, you’ll find it.

I also feel a little envious. She says she studied glass blowing in Europe, and now she’s here studying metal working. I wish I’d embraced those sorts of possibilities when I was younger. I can’t help but feel a little regret for not having spent my life doing things just a bit differently. On the other hand, I had no clue I was into this stuff back then, and back then I probably would have devalued my general feelings on the subject anyway. I have been repeatedly told that “things happen when they are supposed to happen,” so, even though this seems like a late start for me, apparently I’m supposed to have become interested in metal art many years after I received my diploma. I can’t help that. Maybe all this time doing other things has just prepared me to really focus myself wholly and completely on what I want to do right now. I can tell you that if I went back to school now I certainly wouldn’t be skipping classes. I’d be showing up all bright and energetic and annoying the crap out of kids who were hungover or just not really all that into it.

We’ll see where this takes me. I have no clue, I’m just reporting it as it happens.

Oh, and if you know of anyone with shop space on the north side of Indianapolis, I need some.