By Julia Caulfield

Perched on the side of the canyon above Sawpit, sits the Steeprock Joinery.

“The main building is a large wood shop and artist studios, as well as living space and working space upstairs” says Isabell Harcort. She owns and runs Steeprock. It’s a space for artists to work, live, and create.

But on this clear, December morning, the artists working here are kids. Highschoolers, from the Telluride Mountain School.

Daniel Kanow is the Head of the Visual Arts Department and a teacher at the Mountain School. He says part of the art curriculum is to introduce students to as many types of art making as possible.

Kanow notes, “we came up with this idea, ‘let’s incorporate making a welding aspect.”

In what looks like a small shed off of the main house, four 11th and 12th graders are wearing welding helmets and work gloves. Carefully they move a welder across two pieces of steal, while sparks literally fly.

Koko Waller is one of the students learning to weld, she’s in 12th grade, and making a small 3-D sculpture.

“It has some bent pieces in it, which took a long time. That was a learning curve, for sure, no pun intended. It’s going to be a lot of balancing things” Waller says.

This is Waller’s second year participating in the welding class. She says while she doesn’t plan to become a welder in the future, it’s nice to try something new.

“It’s just something different from what we’ve ever done, and what a normal art class would be normally doing” Waller says.

Plus, she sees how it could fit into her work in the future.

Waller adds, “I want to do theatre, and in terms of set building there’s a lot of welding to do, so if I ever need to build a set, I can weld. So it’s good experience and good skills to have for art, and the real world.”

Keith D’Angelo also likes that working with metal can push the students out of their comfort zone. D’Angelo is a professional artist, and welder based out of Steeprock. Along with Kanow, he works with the students on their projects.

D’Angelo says, “You know, at first they’re like ‘wow, this is a little scary. I don’t know what this is. It seems dangerous’ and then within two or three minutes of showing them how to do it, and saying ‘you can do this. You can make this shape. You can make this sculpture’, and their eyes light up and they’re like ‘oh my god this is so cool’. Whether they go with it or not, just for them to say ‘oh it was scary at first and then I could do it’. It’s been really great.”

This is the second year the Telluride Mountain School and Steeprock have teamed up to teach students welding. So far, close to 10 students have participated in the workshops.