Step-back Welding Art

Face blindness. Believe it or not, you can actually become “blind” to faces. Essentially your brain stops being able to recognize and distinguish the various features that make up your mug.

Being diagnosed with face blindness, you’d think that Chuck Close would have no business being a portrait artist. How can you paint faces when you can’t even see them? For Chuck, there was no way of getting around his illness. So he didn’t paint faces, he painted circles.

Up close, his art is just that: circles. Abstract shapes and colors without a recognizable image. But stepping back and looking at the entire piece, it takes on a whole new form.

What Does This Have to Do with Welding?!

A lot, actually. This exact process has become a highly valued form of welding art.

For example, from up close, the below piece is an interesting combination of objects interacting with one another. It’s cool to look at, to see each individual part as its own separate element. But there’s no recognizable form, at least at first. Everything is just smaller art pieces collaged together in a seemingly abstract way.

But stepping back, you realize these abstract details take on a recognizable form, in this case, a human body.

It’s a large art piece made up of smaller art pieces, art within art. Now obviously, most of the welders that create these pieces don’t have face blindness. But similar to Chuck, they’re micro-focused on the smaller picture, while still having to maintain some type of understanding of a big picture that they can’t actually see yet. It’s the perfect cross between skill and mystery. As Chuck said, “The fact that ultimately stacks up to build an image which has any relation to reality is mystifying to me.”

Here’s a few more of our favorite pieces done in this same style, sent in by welders just like you.