Past meets present in blacksmith's shop

By LAURA BEHENNA

Bigfork Eagle

Blacksmithing may conjure up images of ages long past, but for Jeffrey Funk of Bigfork, forging metal is a perfectly contemporary art, as well as his bread and butter.

"I had an affinity for metal from a young age, without ever having seen anyone blacksmithing," he said. "In fact, I didn't really know what it was."

His father, an architect, helped make Funk keenly aware of architecture and design. When he was 14, he got a job with a company that built natural history exhibits and architectural models. He worked there summers and after school for three years, often leaving school early so that he could work.

"I loved it," he said. "There was nothing I'd rather do than go to work."

He put together his own forge at age 18 "and started making stuff."

At Antioch College, a small liberal arts school in Ohio, he took a few art classes while majoring in environmental studies, but discovered he preferred hands-on learning. He moved to Bigfork in 1976, studying at the Flathead Lake Biological Station, but his first love led him to quit school and set up a blacksmithing shop in Bigfork the next year.

Since then he's been constantly busy doing architectural and sculptural metal work. The quality of his work has spread his reputation by word of mouth, and he never needs to advertise. He doesn't a Web site because he already has more work than he can handle, with orders flowing in from California to the Virgin Islands.

Blacksmithing has blossomed again in the last few decades, and as part of that renaissance, Funk has taught many classes around the U.S., including at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. He bought property on McCaffery Road near Echo Lake and built his own forge shop using metal from the old iron bridge that used to stand over Kearney Rapids on the Swan River. He makes nearly all his own tools, mostly a variety of hammers and tongs.

He demonstrated how he transforms a bar of red-hot iron into different shapes with a 500-pound power hammer that runs on compressed air. Stepping on a foot pedal that encircles the bottom of the machine, he quickly turned the bar over and over with tongs, until the machine pounded the bar into a cube with rounded edges, then back into a bar with a handle on one end. After reheating the metal, he hand-hammered the other end of the bar into an arrowhead-like point on top of a century-old anvil.

"There are ethical, environmental questions" inherent in blacksmithing, Funk said. "Metals are a real foundational aspect of all civilizations since civilization existed. Metals are fundamental to our exploitation of energy."

When he teaches blacksmithing classes, he explains the roles metals have played in humans' cultural and social history. In his own shop, he pays attention to how he uses energy in his work. Nineteenth century blacksmiths fueled their machines with coal and charcoal, which were dirty and expensive. Funk powers his equipment with propane, which is cleaner and relatively inexpensive. Within 10 years he plans to start making his own charcoal to use as fuel.

Nearly all Funk's work is on commission. He's made sculptures of swimming trout for parks and colleges, and gates, doors and fireplace screens for private residences, all with nature themes. One gate shows a tree with about 600 leaves, each forged individually by hand. A large gate at the entrance of Kootenai Lodge is edged with intricate Virginia creeper vines.

Funk makes some time for fun and experimentation, though. He built a large hand loom for weaving steel and copper wire into mesh fabrics with various patterns and colors that look different depending on the angles at which they are viewed. These metal fabrics are useful for making fireplace screens.

In a more recent series of experiments has been treating stone as a malleable material by "forging" them much as he forges iron. He picks out igneous rocks like granite and heats them until they soften enough to reshape. Some rock types tend to break apart when he tries to forge them, but he's succeeded in altering many kinds into interesting shapes and textures.

"There are innumerable opportunities for mistakes," he said, smiling.

Some rocks develop a glaze when heated. Others change color completely.

Perhaps Funk's favorite work is designing and building musical instruments. He has made a series of large outdoor instruments called Aeolian harps, or "wind harps," which are typically 30 feet high. Strung from a single, bow-shaped mast are up to 21 strings made of copper-wrapped stainless steel that emit a variety of harmonic tones and percussive beats as the wind blows on them. Several of these instruments are installed in the Flathead Valley and as far away as Atlanta, Ga.

More recently Funk has forged African bells and other percussion instruments from the old iron bridge he purchased years ago.

Funk said transformation and integration are central concepts in his work, and the cross-shaped monument he made for the graves of long-time Flathead resident Sam Bibler and his wife Jean illustrate both ideas. Sam was an avid flower gardener, and Funk forged some of Sam's gardening tools into the monument. And the two arms of the cross each integrate bars that symbolize the integration of Sam and Jean's lives during their long marriage.