Tom Joyce was apprenticed to a blacksmith at the age of 13, and no, Joyce is not a character from a Dickens novel, he's a artist who just won a MacArthur genius grant for his ability to melt and mold metal in completely unexpected ways.
Fascinated by what fire, a hammer, and an anvil can do to a piece of metal, Joyce dropped out of high school to become a full time craftsman. For him, metal is magic, he believes it holds the emotions and energies of all the people who have touched it.
And so from a baptismal font forged from a community's cast-offs to a museum gate fashioned from trash from the banks of the Rio Grande, Joyce practices his peculiar alchemy, transforming craft into art.
