(resolute music) - [Announcer] Production funding provided by the American Welding Society, working to advance the science, technology, and application of welding worldwide, Fabricators and Manufacturers Association International, working to improve the metal processing, forming, and fabricating industries, Society of Manufacturing Engineers, where manufacturing technology and workforce development meet, ESAB, producer of welding and cutting equipment and consumables, Precision Metalforming Association, representing the metalforming industry of North America, Chemical Coaters Association International, providing information and training on surface coating technologies.

Additional funding provided by the Jane K. and Robert C. Stevens Fund for New Programming, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(indomitable music) (serene music) - [Jesse] You look like you're going on Safari.

(Jesse and Albert laughing) - I am.

(laughs) - [Jesse] How's it going, bud?

- [Albert] Hey, Jesse, how you doing?

- Good seeing you.

I think you know we're definitely different parts of the country, different upbringings, different disciplines, which we've practiced for years.

Albert's older than me, but when you see the way he lays hands on metal, and the way he hammers stuff, and the way he watches me do it, we all of a sudden become the same, like kinfolk.

- Both of us have worked several decades with metal and metal technology.

His point of view and his direction, however, is quite different from mine.

Most of the work that he's been involved in is quite functionally based, the design of motorcycles, custom car work, a certain type of weaponry.

I come from a kind of a formal art background, dealing with aesthetics, dealing with the continuity of art history, and I'm bringing other sensibilities to my artwork.

- He's a pioneer.

When blacksmith work on gates, and fences, and stuff like that was kind of a linear game, where it was just square, and mortise and tenon, and square, maybe a little curve here and there, he took it and just did it his own way, and it, how would I describe it?

It's like an Alice in Wonderland kind of fantasy world that he's worked in.

The legwork and thought that has to be involved to have all that stuff lock together with minimal welding and finish, and it looks like something, it creates a feeling when you see it, that's what Albert does.

I don't have that kind of artistic ability.

I mean, he's a genuine artist.

My first bike, I built in '89.

I built it in my mom's garage.

In 2000, or 1994, I moved into my first shop, not working out of my garage anymore.

'Kay, now I have my own shop.

I really wanted to apply high-end coachbuilding, fine sheet metal and fabrication techniques to the motorcycle world, which didn't exist.

By like '96 or '97, I was making my own frames, making my own sheet metal, making all my own wheels, and parts, and kinda building my own bike, and along the way, I kinda gained notoriety, I guess.

I was on like 100 magazine covers and all this stuff, kinda one of the biggest names in the motorcycle industry through the '90s.

Then TV came.

I was on TV for five or six years.

- [Narrator] Jesse ciphering out the geometry of the enormous gas tank by tacking a skeleton in place.

- So I'm gonna go make this over at my shop faster.

There's too many people in here.

And my dream was to build one bike for myself, and then my dream was to have a motorcycle shop, and I've kind of far exceeded both of those, so now it's just extra credit.

I get letters, and mail, and e-mails, and anybody, any way someone wants, can contact me.

I get a lot of kids that wanna come here and work, or apprentice, or learn what I do.

I totally understand their point of view because when I was 21, I wrote you one of those letters, and I was like, "Man, I wanna do what you do, Albert Paley," and, "I love the metal work," and it, just like, "could you teach me your ways?"

and I never got a response, but I was never mad about it because when you mail something, it just goes, and you can't respond to every one.

- Yeah, no, it's the same with me.

I mean, I get so many letters and things like that, and at that time I was just working night and day and correspondence really wasn't my strong point, so take my apology for it.

- Yeah.

No, it's all right.

Well, we went to your place, and we had a great meeting, and saw the shop, and had lunch, and then we talked about some stuff, and then I came back here, and then, like two weeks after that, I got a e-mail from you about the project, and I told my wife, I was like, "Look, I been waiting "25 years for this response."

- There we go.

(laughs) - But it was good.

(serene music) - I went down to visit Jesse James in Austin.

Well, I've never designed a motorcycle, and Jessie's never done sculpture, but nevertheless, our skill set is the same, and approach to metal is the same, so when the discussion went is how can we work together?

What we proposed was doing two sculptures, that he would start one in his studio, I would start one in my studio, with no communication whatsoever, and we would do the sculptures what we would consider halfway, whatever half the sculpture means.

I don't know if that means half-finished, or half the size, or he could say, "Well, Paley only did 20%, "and he's gonna do 80%."

I don't know.

That's his call.

He would not know what I'm doing.

I would not know what he is doing, so we would work independently in our studios, and then, at that point, we would shift them, and then we would complete the other's sculpture.

In the past, people have come up to collaborate, but it's never been a situation that I thought was viable.

What we've established about building these two sculptures I think is a very unique opportunity.

- I think it's a great opportunity for me, personally, just to be able to work with you and do something.

It's like someone that I've looked up to and admired for so long, and then now we get to put hands on metal together.

That's pretty special, so the nuts and bolts of it, we're gonna do eight feet tall.

It started, we were thinking 36 tall.

Now it's eight feet tall.

- Yeah, well, things grow, yeah.

- Yeah, exactly.

Projects get bigger, and if we're gonna do it, we might as well do it, and 36 inches wide.

- Well, the base- - Yeah, 36 inch- - I mean, we might cantilever just for stability, so yeah, so I mean however you interpret it because I think that the interesting thing is that we have a basic concept.

We don't have the dialogue.

I mean, the dialogue will be with the work, not necessarily with us, so if it could be seen either way, that we could either build half of the sculpture, or we can build the skeleton of the sculpture, and however we respond to it.

If we do these, what's going to happen with this?

And creating a public forum, auctioning this off in some kind of public event where the monies could be used for education would seem like a- - Yeah, I think something- - Be like the perfect venue.

- that would teach kids welding, and hand skills, and all that stuff.

- Yeah, exactly.

- That's really important to me.

Are you excited about it?

- Yeah, yeah, because I, well, I think it's a, I'm excited about the challenge of it.

(pensive music) Normally, when I have a commission, there's a lot of designing, a lot of preparation that has to happen.

On something that's large scale, you can't make a mistake, so everything has to be laid out.

On a project like this, it's totally opposite of that.

It's very improvisational.

There's no drawings.

There's no sketches.

It happens as it happens.

I'm just gonna start working.

I'm just gonna start working.

We're gonna, I mean, obviously, just the physicality of it, we'll start with the base plate, and put Jessie and my signatures on it, and then we're gonna start building things.

(welder crackling) What we're gonna do is we're gonna heat in here.

- [Assistant] 'Kay.

- I want you to pull this way, so if you bring the- - [Assistant] Man lift over here?

- Bring the man lift here, and you might have to lean on the thing, and then we'll pull it over, and we'll progressively do that.

It's gonna get hot up there.

- [Assistant] Sure.

(torch hissing) (diligent music) - 7'9".

Give Jesse a little room.

Yeah, so anyhow.

Yeah, so that's the main structural element, and then we'll start putting secondaries on that.

It's gonna take about 20 minutes, 25 minutes to get the forge hot.

(forge whooshing) (diligent music) - Forging is like the oldest form of making stuff aside from pottery, and weaving, and making your own wool and silk.

Forging was how weapons were made, and it's basically taking heat, and heating up metal to cherry red or bright yellow, and smashing it against an anvil or a rock, and shaping it into something else.

- The metal is heated up to a bright yellow, about 2,000 degrees, and then, through the hammering process, you change its form.

When the metal is hot, and you're forging, and it's very, very plastic, and in many ways it mimics natural forms.

It swells, it deletes, when it's hot, you can bend it, and then, as it cools, it kind of arrests that form, and it's always been used through history in that kind of context.

It's totally different from fabrication, and totally different from other processes, and probably one of the oldest technologies.

- Before the mechanized era of electric welding in the late '20s, early '30s, everything was forged, so 200 years ago, if you wanted to build a house, you had to go to the blacksmith and get all the nails made so you could build the house.

You couldn't go to the store.

Everything was a blacksmith game.

Even this machine that's made for sheet metal, an electric machine, even this stuff, a blacksmith had to make these strut bars and turn that little eyelet so you could bolt 'em down.

That's just the way it was.

- Jesse, he uses it for developing Damascus material, which is a layering of various different alloys to create pattern work.

I use forging mainly to develop form for my sculptures.

(forge whooshing) (diligent music) (hammer tapping) This started to get cold, so we'll take another heat tomorrow, and I'll pull that out, but just by working on the hammer, all the different forms you can get.

Okay, let's shut it down.

(pensive music) - He's got such a distinct style.

Rather than trying to clash, or take center stage, or something, my sculpture should be a framework for his, so it's Albert Paley.

I'm not trying to upstage him.

I think I...

But it'll also force him in a box, which I don't think he works in very often, so in a challenge, so if this is his eight-foot-tall sculpture, and I was kinda thinking mine should should be these big dramatic curves, something like this, where it's big, beautiful sheet metal work, and this metal should be probably aluminum and copper, and then this stuff will be kinda almost like a hot air balloon, kinda.

It'll come out, and where his sculpture'll be in the middle, and this thing'll come around it, and polished on the inside so you can see both sides of Albert's sculpture on the inside, where it'll reflect, you'll be able to see the backside and the inside, and it'll hit, if you light it right, it'll light his sculpture in different ways, so if I leave a opening at the top, basically baiting him, (chuckles) so if I leave a opening at the top, you know he's gonna take it and make something that comes through like Albert does through the top, and then this thing'll (whooshes) spin around it.

(scampering music) (cutter buzzing) (hammer tapping) (hammer tapping) (mallet tapping) (sighs) - All right.

Yeah, Dave, you wanna just hold this?

Go a little this way.

Okay.

Hold it.

Pick up a little bit, and then that, yeah, that's it right there.

- Wanna come down a little bit?

- Nah, that's all right.

Here, here, right there.

All right.

All right, let's weld that.

(welder crackling) - Welding is fusing metal together with heat and a filler material.

There's MIG welding, stick welding, TIG welding, gas welding is the kinda the four big ones, but they're all the same thing.

You take two pieces of metal.

It doesn't matter how they are, and you wanna stick 'em together.

You heat it up, and create a puddle, and you dip a base metal in there to fill the bubble that the melting takes place, and you let it cool, and it's one piece.

It's the most amazing thing ever.

(diligent music) - In many ways, the welding process, you might think, is just very technical.

You just put a weld bead down, and what the weld bead does is you use molten metal, and it fuses the two elements together, so that way it's a structural joint.

However, that structural joint, because of the welding process, is the surface is different from the parent metal.

It might be textural, so you could actually create a textural passage by building weld seams up.

There's a possibility, if you're using steel, and you're putting it together, you might use stainless steel to weld it, so therefore, the weld bead can become a line of a different color, and therefore, add an aesthetic thing to it, so texture, color, variation of form can happen by just taking that simple weld bead, but it's how you interpret it and how you apply it.

(welder crackling) Yeah, you wanna give me a hand here, Dave?

- Yeah.

- We're gonna heat and bend.

- First one?

This one?

(torch whooshing) - Yeah.

Dave, you wanna grab this?

Okay, pop it off of there.

(metal clunking) Yeah, stick that in there.

Yeah, stick it on top of there if you can, and then we'll... Yeah, on top of that high point.

Okay.

- [Dave] That?

- [Albert] We wanna put this in the forge.

We're just gonna heat and bend this.

- [Dave] Okay.

- So we're gonna break, so just stick it in and let it soak.

(forge whooshing) Okay.

Yeah, stand on that or something.

(Albert grunting) - [Assistant] You got a sledge right there.

- Okay, open it up.

Let it fall.

Yep.

Yep, that's good.

Yep.

(sledgehammer clunking) All right, you wanna quench that?

And then, when it's cool, bring it down.

- I started down this road (sighs) of art and trying to do, I think, one of the skills that I'm proficient at, which is sheet metal for me, and I started forming this big piece, and started mapping out, and I'm have to make a buck, and all this stuff, and I really, I don't know, something just made me stop, and I think it was my subconscious that, I don't know, when you butt that stuff, that light, thin auto body aluminum metal against Paley's huge, heavy steel, I just didn't think it would look good.

I kinda had an epiphany where, like, "Why am I not doing this sculpture "just like I do everything else, "like the skeleton of it, "and the nuts and bolts, "inner workings that holds everything together," and so basically, what I did is sketch out a skeleton.

I kinda know the way he thinks.

He's gonna make his, and I'm kinda pointing him in a direction that he needs to go.

His is gonna have to come up from the bottom, and up through the center of mine, and like kinda blossom, and he'll see that path, and take it.

I know it, and I'm even gonna put the mounting holes where he needs to mount his, so what we'll do is this stuff will be all water jet cut stainless.

Then we'll grind it, and these'll be machined out of aluminum, and then all, this spine'll kinda articulate the way these bolt on.

I think we also need to shorten radius in this way on the length.

- [Assistant] Cut it- - Yeah, so this- - so it's got a curve- - Yeah, yeah.

- on each one.

- Unless I change the spacing of (indistinct).

Right now, it's a two-inch bolt pattern, almost.

- Yeah.

- So it's like- - Aluminum's easy to blend and shape.

- Yeah.

I mean, I could do- - Just watch here.

- quite a bit.

- Watch your counterbore, so it doesn't get like paper thin right there.

- Yeah, that's another thing, bolting it together.

- Well, just do a pocket, though, and make the bolt exposed.

I don't mind that, and I think that'll make it look more articulated if the bolt's exposed.

- If we could do it where we just send a bolt through, like a nice nut.

- Be way nicer.

We're basically doing this thing, structural-wise, exactly how we would do a motorcycle, or a car part, or something like that, and making it, all the little details like the hardware, and the finishes, and the surface finishes, and all that stuff.

This whole thing is six, so we're leaving it two feet short of our end up, so Albert can come up two feet past where we are.

- Like the actual head- - Yeah, so that was the kinda theory, almost taking a back seat to his stuff and letting ours complement his, where we stop six feet, and then he can go another two feet to the eight foot limit.

(diligent music) (router buzzing) That kinda barrel shape of pieces to be made out of solid aluminum, we have to start with some pretty giant 300-pound chunks of aluminum to do that, so Mike has to precut all of it, then comes in with the 3-D and surfacing.

This is like number one of the ribs.

We'll finish these, and block-sand 'em, and this'll go out to a military spec anodizer, and we'll put a real industrial cool finish on it, but all the hardware'll be detailed, and, I dunno, it's kinda my thumb print is I like to do stuff that maybe isn't that much in your face, but the closer you get, you see all the little neat details, so... (tools whizzing) (sandpaper scratching) His mount's gonna be right here.

Well, when he put it together, one of the pins came from the inside, and hit the bottom of the hole, and put a little divot in our surface finish, and it's right by the first bolt, right by Albert and my names.

It'd be one of those things, if I saw someone that did that, or any of us, we'd be, "Ha-ha, you guys suck."

It makes me feel really good that we do pretty much everything here, though, because we can fix it.

(diligent music) (tailgate clunks) (truck rumbles) (forklift rumbles) - Yeah.

'Kay.

That's good.

All right.

(screwdrivers whizzing) Okay, is that it?

- [Assistant] I think so.

You ready?

- Okay, this is gonna be interesting.

All right, here we go.

(Chris whistles) (chuckles) Jeez.

- Oh, wow.

- Hm.

So, Chris?

- [Chris] Yeah.

- So do you know anything about anodizing?

- (sighs) No, not really, other than what it is.

Why?

What does that say?

Mil spec hard anodized, so- - So this is all, this is- - It's already been finished is what it's saying.

- This has already been, this has already been finished.

- You gotta be careful.

- Yeah, 'cause I thought we were gonna do the finishing, so this is gonna be interesting.

What does that say?

- [Chris] 10-18 mild steel.

Okay to weld.

- Okay, and what does that say?

- This says 4-10 stainless, and it says don't it up.

- Don't it up.

- That's right.

- Okay.

(both laughing) - Yeah.

What does this mean?

- [Chris] It means don't touch them with your fingerprints.

You'll get oil all over 'em.

You know your- - Yeah, we'll have to- - greasy fingerprints.

- We'll have to see what happens with that, so look, in that case, why don't we get some rubber gloves, and let's get it out of the box, and we can see what it looks like.

(screwdrivers whizzing) - That's cool.

That's kinda cool.

It's definitely from Albert's mind.

This is how he thinks and sees stuff.

I predicted it.

We have to do forged stuff on this.

We can't use the same process and same skill set.

You know what could be, could have been done here.

We made one sculpture simultaneously 'cause this one coulda went right up the center of that one.

The height, everything.

Should I call them?

We'll just send it back?

Change the base- - [Assistant] They built us in.

- Yeah.

That's pretty, pretty ironic.

I don't know.

I was thinking about it all last night.

Today, wondering what it was gonna look like, and then I don't think I expected that.

I mean, I'm pretty familiar with his style, but I think we made it easier on him.

Where his is pretty, has a clearly defined roadmap.

Now he could throw us a left, and go outside the rib cage or something, but I don't think he would do that.

- Just the whole process of trying to adjust to what's here.

It's...

In a lot of ways it's symmetrical yet asymmetrical at the same time, and this aesthetic, the machine aesthetic, is totally different from what I normally work with, so it's gonna be interesting.

We'll... Yeah, let's sling it up again, and pick it up, and let's go up about, let's go up about two foot.

- [Assistant] Okay.

- Wanna get the forklift?

See that big ring up there?

- [Chris] Yeah.

- We'll bring that down.

- All right.

- You just drag it off.

Doesn't make any difference.

(metal clanks) (forklift rumbling) Why don't you just cut that other side, and these are welded on this side.

I think we could just break it off.

- Break it out and break it.

(torch hissing) - It was awfully low, and plus the base was pretty frail for the mass of that, so I wanted to get that up above eye level, and then create more of a substantial base, and then also to give it, so you have curves in there, but then he has it on a perpendicular base, so I wanted to get more of an angle 'cause when something is straight, it's stagnant, and something like that, it wants to move, so it creates movement in the base.

(forklift rumbling) (metal clunking) Come on down.

Come on down.

(metal screeching) Oh, come on.

Yes.

(metal screeching) Hold.

Hold.

(metal clanking) (grinder whizzing) Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yeah, you just drop it down here.

'Kay, hold.

All right, come on down a little bit.

'Kay, hold.

Okay, let's pick it up and lay it down.

Okay, let's, this is a good time to stop, so yeah, yeah.

Thanks a lot for staying.

- [Woman] What are you gonna do?

- I don't know.

I don't like the way it sits on the ground- - Okay.

- so I'm picking it up.

- All right.

- I don't like its verticality, so I'm putting it on an angle, and... - There you go.

- So get a little, get a little dynamism in it.

(forklift rumbling) - Keep going, keep going, keep going.

(ratchet clicking) (truck rumbling) - All right.

Hold on.

That's good.

- [Jesse] Hand me that strap.

- Yeah.

- [Man] If you're gonna clear, you'll be good.

- Whoa, whoa, whoa!

I'm just kiddin'.

(laughing) Mike knows me well enough.

He turned around laughing.

I love curves.

I don't like straight lines.

I like stuff that's soft, so I think that thing, I can really work with.

I think take the heaviness out of it, and add some really beautiful kind of my original idea, but apply it to that 'cause I scrapped the original idea, mostly, to do this big elegant thing with his, with his on top of it, doesn't work, but big, heavy Paley-style with some elegance to it, I think that works.

I'ma cut these little nubs off 'cause they're kinda up my, unless I go behind it, but then I would still need to cut these off.

(torch hissing) Sorry, Albert.

(laughs) (torch hissing) (metal thunks) - Okay, you wanna get a carpenter's square, and the cutting torch, and the chalk, and let's do it.

(diligent music) (torch hissing) Okay?

- [Assistant] Yep.

- All right.

How are you with the plasma?

- [Assistant] Perfect.

- Down a little bit.

Okay, good.

We're moving along.

Ah, Chris, you can- (torch hissing) Here, just hold that there.

You wanna hold this here?

(hammer clunking) (torch hissing) Okay.

Thanks a lot.

You can shut her down.

Hoo!

- I'm gonna make some framework that probably comes up and kinda, he's got this whole kinda circular motion, so kinda keep it going.

Give it a little splash of color of a warmer metal so.

(diligent music) (grinder whizzing) (torch hissing) (cutter whirring) (hammer tapping) (hammer clanking) It'll be perfectly flush, like it's part of that, like it was always supposed to be there.

(hammer tapping) (torch hissing) This piece is gonna look cool.

(hammer clanking) (welder hissing) That looks kinda cool.

Sand it smooth, you won't even be able to see where it's connected, and the forging's kinda in the same vein as his stuff a little bit.

(grinder buzzing) (forklift rumbling) (sandblaster whooshing) (paint gun hissing) (wind whipping) (truck rumbling) (diligent music) - You ready?

- All right.

(Albert laughs) Eh, nice.

Picked up on the curves there a little bit, huh?

- Yeah, the first thing I did is cut these nubs off of this side so I could get that sweep and kinda follow that line, but just to soften it up a little bit, I think just captured the swoop around it (whooshes) without doing something that overpowered and... - Well, it's, we're definitely gonna have a contrast.

- That's was the goal, I think.

- Oh good.

Well, I'll let you pull the... - (laughing) Wow.

Wow.

That's crazy.

(laughs) That's nuts.

(laughs) That's crazy.

I woulda never guessed that in a million years.

That's cool, and here I was, I felt bad 'cause I cut these three little chicken pieces off of yours.

I'm like, "Oh man, "he's gonna get- - Yep, there's not, everything you gave me's in here.

(Jesse laughs) Yeah.

I really like the volume and the sense, so the whole thing was designed around this cage structure.

- Yep.

That's nuts.

I dig it.

It's pretty crazy.

I was expecting one thing, and saw something completely different.

I like being surprised, not being predictable.

- When we first started this out, I had mentioned to you that there's times that people wanted to collaborate, and when two people have strong approaches, it's usually, it's very difficult to get together, and that's how, 'cause we were gonna- - Well, it's like a competition.

- Yeah, we were gonna do one piece, but then we broke it up so we could- - Yeah.

- so we could deal with that, and I mean, even though I was, I was curious of what your response might be, I mean, my main concern was to do a good sculpture, and I gave you my vocabulary, and with the forging aspect 'cause I know you like the forging, and yours was incredibly pristine and resolved, and it took me several days to just look at it and try to figure out, and I picked it up with a crane, and I tilted it, and I looked at it, and got it up off the floor, and at first we started, I was just gonna use yours as kind of a central core, and then kind of build off of it, but your symmetry was so clean and so accurate, no matter what I did was always fighting that, so I gave that cage a little dynamism so.

- [Jesse] It's cool, though.

You can still see it in there.

- Well, actually, when we got, when we took it out of the crate, I had all my guys have gloves on when we were handling it, so we didn't get- How long did that last for?

- A day or so.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- No, that's awesome.

- [Albert] Yeah.

- Now, it was a learning experience for me.

I mean, when I got yours, I knew what I was gonna do.

I followed the lines that you set out, and did some big difficult sweeps to go around it, but to start the one that I sent to you was, it just took forever to, I didn't know what I wanted.

I just couldn't, I don't know, to do something that, one, isn't functional in the way that I'm used to, and two, it's not done (laughs) is difficult.

- Exactly.

- You know?

- But you know, in a lot of the ways, say, when you approach, I saw, when I was at your studio, and I saw the cars that you did, you took a car that had a certain quality about it, and then you would change it, and alter it, and do all of that, so in a lot of ways you took what was there, and then you reinterpreted it, and in many ways, that's exactly what I did with yours, that there was a given form, and all the form was there, but I just reinterpret it and- - I've never been as intimate with your stuff as I was in the last few weeks, so to see the...

I think I gained an all-new respect for it.

To look at it 20 feet away, or in a photo, or on a computer screen, or on a TV screen, you're so, you're kinda detached from the detail, so to see the lines and see everything up close, I think I have a new respect and understanding for it.

You're so well-versed and well-adjusted to what you do.

I look at one of your big sculptures, and even though it's all steel that's heated up, bent, welded, formed, forged, I still wouldn't know where to start.

- (laughs) Well, that's a- - I wouldn't know where, and the fact, and it goes back to you being able to sketch the stuff.

That's in your head already, and I think you talking about building a bike, you're like, "No, no, no, no, no, no.

"I'm not.

It's not gonna happen."

I think it's the same.

- No, exactly.

Exactly.

- It's the process of how do, where do I do that?

- Yeah, well it's- - How do I start?

I think it's- - Experience creates a knowledge base, and then, out of the knowledge base, you function, and exactly.

Everybody knows that steel is an inorganic material.

It's dug up from the earth, and it's used by technology for armaments, or machinery, or building, or whatever, but I work it in an organic context, and people say, "Oh, it looks so alive.

"It looks like it's a plant, "or it looks like this, or it looks like that."

Now, what happens, which is definitely part of the human condition, is that you know something is not alive.

You know it's inorganic, but you're experiencing the vitality of life, so you're dealing with your intellectual stuff that you know that that's exactly not alive, but emotionally, you're experiencing that it is alive, and the only way those two things come together is through the aspect of paradox.

That's kind of the mystery aspect because how can something that's diametrically opposed to one another resolve itself?

And it only resolves through you.

(ethereal music) - [Announcer] To find out more about the story of where the sculptures are now, go to WXXI.ORG/DialogueInMetal.

(diligent music) Production funding provided by the American Welding Society, working to advance the science, technology, and application of welding worldwide, Fabricators and Manufacturers Association International, working to improve the metal processing, forming, and fabricating industries, Society of Manufacturing Engineers, where manufacturing technology and workforce development meet, ESAB, producer of welding and cutting equipment and consumables, Precision Metalforming Association, representing the metalforming industry of North America, Chemical Coaters Association International, providing information and training on surface coating technologies.

Additional funding provided by the Jane K. and Robert C. Stevens Fund for New Programming, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(ethereal music)