You probably don’t know too many blacksmiths. I don’t. I don’t know any. But now I know Douglas Pryor, because he’s the shit at fucking with metal. He’s more metal than a rare Venom cassette at that thrift store in Orinda. He is a Sacramento guy you may not have heard of … yet.
Metallurgy and blacksmithing are something people can generally assume is done by a robot or a marginally paid worker in a place with chains and sparks flying everywhere to the glowing backdrop of molten metal pouring from a massive chalice.
“As I got into metal work, I was cutting grass as a kid, for a neighbor, and he had a coal forge in his backyard,” Pryor recalls. “I bought my first coal forge, bought my first shitty anvil when I was 16. I mean I didn’t have much, I had a ball peen hammer and a garage to use it in.”
So, a young Pryor peened away at his steel. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was the realms of fantasy that got Pryor first interested in metalworking.
“When I was in high school, a lot of medieval movies were coming out,” Pryor says. “I think the first Lord of the Rings movie came out, and you know as kid, you’re all about it. You are slaying orcs in your head. I got a younger brother and dragged him everywhere and that sort of thing, and found some martial arts teachers that would teach us how to sword fight. That was OK, but I couldn’t afford my armor or anything, so I started learning how to make it, and that was one of the big reasons for getting into smithing at all, so I could sword fight competitively.”
As the appeal of clashing steel and honor lost its luster, he wanted to learn how to make his own armor; art born of necessity.
“But after the testosterone balanced out a little bit and that wasn’t so important, but I was still fervent about the metal work, because it turns everything into a blank canvas,” Pryor says. “So, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but got hooked up at Sierra College. They’ve got an amazing welding program through the school, and I pretty much ran through all the programs, kept taking all their metal arts courses until I couldn’t take anymore. Learned enough to find out what I wanted to do next.”
So Pryor decided to delve deeper into his craft. He learned more about welding and found inspiration in the art world.
“You look at these museum pieces, and they didn’t have a Miller Multimatic [welding system] around,” Pryor says. “How did they accomplish better sculpture than we are doing today?
“You learn all the answers to these questions and they leave you with more questions,” he goes on to say. “Where do you go when there’s no institution to teach these things? You’ve got to leave the institution and find people who know.”
That’s exactly what Pryor did. Founded in 1977, the California Blacksmithing Association has more than 600 members statewide. They offer resources such as job placement and classes, from level one, to certified instructor.
“I got hooked up with the California Blacksmithing Association,” he says. “A ton of the old guard is starting to go out, so they need new blood … it’s just like anything. If you don’t keep it alive and there’s no need to keep it alive … we’ll lose it.”
Pryor says he’s been fashioning armor for “10-plus years.” A quick perusal of his website will reveal that he’s achieved a high level of skill at his craft. Lion Head, with its fantastically flowing mane and rich oil patina, looks more like the work of some long-forgotten deity than a mere mortal. His equally awe-inspiring The Elephant, which Pryor has been working on through the mid-summer and early fall, is a mammoth piece (pun intended) fabricated out of a 6-foot-tall hunk of plate steel. In the future, Pryor says that there may be even more impressive works on the way.
“I worked with Tony Swatton,” he says. “He’s made all these swords for Pirates of the Caribbean, he made the hook from Hook. We worked on some stuff that will come out in 2019.”
Sculpting with metal is a skill that has been passed down through the ages, and Pryor does his part to keep the craft alive by offering classes. Working with steel may seem like a daunting task for the uninitiated (and it most likely is), but as Pryor puts it, it’s really just like any other art when you get right down to it. All you need is a willingness to work and a lot of imagination.
“Metals turn into blank canvases,” Pryor says. “And all your chisels become paint brushes, if you can draw you can chase.”
Heterogenous, a show featuring Douglas Pryor, Emerald Barkley, Elena Botts, Ivan Farmer and Bruce Gossett, will have its opening reception at FE Gallery (1100 65th St., Sacramento) on Oct. 14, 2017. Pryor will be performing a live blacksmithing demo at the reception. The show will run through November. If you’re interested in taking one of Pryor’s classes, check out his website Douglaspryor.com, or you can also follow him on Facebook @DouglasAPryor.
**This piece first appeared in print on pages 18 – 19 of issue #250 (Oct. 9 – 23, 2017)**
From infancy to young adulthood, our brain is developing to understand the material world around us. As social creatures, a large part of this development is dependent on our relationships (nature vs. nurture, to put it simply). Arguably, some of the most valued relationships we will develop are with those most influential to us. If you don’t agree, why not ask David Wetzl’s art students. For two decades, Wetzl has been momentously impacting his students at Sacramento State and Sierra College. But after recently being diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a degenerative disease affecting the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, Wetzl has decided to retire and dedicate his time to his personal works. Until March 1, JAYJAY Gallery (5520 Elvas Ave.) will be exhibiting Wetzl’s recent and classic works. Come see his beautiful response to this obstacle in life (for free), from Wednesday – Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For questions or specifications on exhibit show times, call JAYJAY Gallery at (916) 453-2999.
This Wednesday, Feb. 20 will see a DJ event of epic proportions at District 30 (1022 K Street) as Red Bull Thre3style University takes over the popular downtown nightclub. Regional DJs will compete for a chance to win an all expense paid trip and invite to compete at Red Bull Thre3style University in San Francisco on March 7 at Manor West.
Rocking the party will be Jurts (representing Sacramento State), Heartworm (also representing Sacramento State), T-Roy (representing Chico State), Kronyak (representing University of Nevada, Reno) and Dr. Freezy (representing Sierra College). There will also be a special opening set by Penthaus, resident DJ for District 30’s “I Heart House Music Thursday’s.” Here is how the voting will work for the competition: Each person that comes through the door gets a voting ticket. In addition to that vote, each time someone buys a Red Bull drink they get another ticket. Each DJ will have a box that you can drop a ticket in to vote for them. They each get a fifteen minute set to showcase their skills and they must play at least three different genres of music. The goal is simple, rock the party the hardest!
There is no cover and the doors open at 9 p.m. 21-and-over only. Get there early, because the first 50 people get a free drink ticket! If you or your group needs a sober driver, Red Bull is hooking up a promo code to get $20 off a ride from Uber, who will pick you up and take you home in a Town Car! Just download the Uber app on your iPhone or Android device and enter the promo code “SacRedBull” and then request a ride.
For more information, hit up the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/543706365660458/?ref=ts&fref=ts
Local four-piece difficult to define
Happy 4/20. If only you were in Arcata, you could be ZuhGin’ out.
After CD release parties in Sacramento and Roseville last week, the four-piece from the City of Trees cruised the ZuhGmobile to Humboldt for a weekend lineup of shows capped off by a 4/20 celebration Monday at the Humboldt State University Quad.
ZuhG will perform at noon at Sierra College in Rocklin on Thursday. The evening before, on Earth Day, they have an all-ages gig at Pyramid Alehouse in Sacramento.
On the April Second Saturday Art Walk, in Sacramento on April 11, ZuhG lured the audience away from the art and the couches in the back of the Blue Lamp to the dance floor with their set that featured songs from their new album ZuhG Life. A heap of jackets piled onto one couch beneath the artwork of Brian Nichols, ZuhG’s frontman.
“Listen to OutKast,” Nichols said while they played a “So Fresh So Clean” interlude.
Shoeless, Nichols led the band on guitar and vocals. Justin Vance opened their set with his bassline for “Accessories,” an homage to the mundanity in life.
Brian “Bot” Swart was the highlight of the night and, in a way, he is in ZuhG Life, playing tenor saxophone, giving the band the sound they want—”to be unlike others,” how they define ZuhG.
Self-taught drummer Matt Klee said in an interview at Nichols’s house that in order to get better he had to get uncomfortable. So, with Nichols, he took a jazz ensemble class at Sierra College a year ago. That’s where they met Bot.
In that class, Nichols said he met a mentor of sorts who taught him jazz guitar.
“I wanted to play jazz guitar, and he played way sicker than me,” he said. “Now, it’s all about practicing daily. We’re trying to get better every day as a band.”
A semester’s worth of jam sessions and Bot was a part of ZuhG. Though it wasn’t their intention, he replaced the band’s cello player, Jarrod Matthews, who left the band after Bot’s sax was added. (ZuhG Life’s bonus track features an improv session with Matthews and Bot.)
The youngest in the band at 19, Bot gives ZuhG its jazz element that makes the funk-rock-reggae-jam—whatever you’d like to call it—band a little hard to categorize. Last year ZuhG was nominated for a Sammie in the SN&R in the R&B category. This year, they earned the nomination in the Jam Band category. Recently, High Times Magazine online added them as an unsigned band of the week.
Both Bot and Nichols are studying music, though Nichols is at Sacramento City College now.
Local radio station KWOD 106.5 plays their song “Shangri La,” because it’s “reggae enough,” Nichols said at his house. “I wanted them to choose ‘Lately,’ but they said it was ‘too jazzy.'”
Bot and the guys laughed it off. “Too jazzy is a compliment,” Bot said.
Surely their music wasn’t too jazzy, or maybe it was, to make enough cash to produce ZuhG Life at Sacramento’s Pus Cavern Studios. The recording is great.
“We’d like to thank Northstar and Sugar Bowl for funding this album,” Nichols joked, because they were able to book a couple shows a month at the Tahoe resorts during winter.
Tahoe in the winter. They’ll see the coast for spring. From San Jose to Ocean Beach they have shows lined up along the coast for two weeks until they return to Davis to play the G. St. Pub, May 16 at Beatnik Studios Boobie Bash and May 23 at Marylin’s on K.
Despite rising gas prices, and fears of climate change buzzing through the general populace, hot rod culture is still alive and well. And with talented people like Eric “Eggie” Foust making contributions to “kustom kulture,” it’s not hard to see why. The Sacramento-born artist started Mindless Pinstriping back in 2005, but Foust started working as a pinstriper a year prior.
“There were a lot of nights I didn’t go out and I would stay up till like three in the morning just doing practice panels,” Foust says. “Pinstriping takes a lot of dedication, patience and practice.”
All that had work has now paid off, and in a short time. Foust, who also studies art at Sierra College, is doing pretty well for himself. The 23-year-old lifelong artist (he received an award for his first art award while in kindergarten) has clients worldwide. Foust spread the word about Mindless Pinstriping by “networking with other artists, vending at car shows, doing art for bands, selling art on the Internet, and having art in galleries.”
“You have to make art and make sure you put it out there,” he says.
Animators such as William Hanna, Joseph Barbera and Tex Avery have all had an influence on Foust’s art, but it was the work of legendary artist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth who opened Foust’s eyes to the world of hot rod/kustom kulture.
“My dad always had a hot rod and my mom was always doing art, and I liked both,” Foust says. “I just never knew about the mixture of both worlds until I saw Roth’s work.”
Roth is probably best known for his grotesque stab at Mickey Mouse called Rat Fink, which became the symbol of Southern California hot rod culture through the ’50s and ’60s. Over the years, Rat Fink has been drawn by artists closely associated with Roth (such as Steve Fiorella), and now the character makes appearances in Foust’s artwork as well.
“I think all the kustom kulture artists are trying to keep Ed’s vision alive and he lives on through the Rat,” Foust says.
As for future plans, the artist says he hopes to “learn as much as I can about art and explore as many art forms I can and I guess ill see where it takes me.” For more information about Foust’s art and Mindless Pinstriping, look him up on Myspace at myspace.com/mindless_pinstriping.
By James Barone
