Acadiana Juneau family plays with fire and metal to create jewelry, sculptures, furniture

SCOTT — The Juneaus like to enjoy with fireplace. They have been accomplishing it for many years, making use of higher-temp torches to form and fuse steel into special jewelry, sculptures and household furniture.

Pat and Suzanne Juneau satisfied in higher education in Lafayette, and in the additional than 50 a long time due to the fact, they married,  taught faculty a short time and turned comprehensive-time artists.

Their perform carries on nowadays with double the palms. Their son, Andre, cuts patterns in aluminum with a huge CNC machine to assist Pat make painted folk artwork sculptures and furnishings, and daughter Angelique makes jewelry with her mother. Her favorite items are the more whimsical merchandise like tiaras and headpieces.

Collectively they are Juneau Metalworks, a family small business comprising two distinct kinds of steel artwork. Pat and Suzanne also started off the Louisiana Craft Guild, of which Andre is now the president.

‘I consider what I do typically playing’

Suzanne, 73, sits beside two huge tanks with an acetylene oxygen torch in her hand. She wears copper rings she created herself on pretty much just about every finger, an work to soothe her arthritis. Goggles include her eyes, a metal hairpin, which she also built, of course, retains again her hair.

“You want it,” she claims about the barrette. “This (get the job done) will melt away your hair, no doubt about that.”

At this station in her store behind their property in Scott, she uses different dimension strategies on her torch to soften bronze rods and place them in a way that appears like she’s drawing with the molten metal.

“I am just enjoying proper now,” she says, making the bracelet. “I look at what I do generally playing.

“That is the enjoyable of it. You can do what ever you want when you want. I have an idea and can begin working on it. At times it operates. In some cases it isn’t going to.”

It can be a apply she’s been perfecting since she took a jewelry study course at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now UL Lafayette) in the 1970s. It wasn’t her significant, but she found her enthusiasm that semester.

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“I loved doing the job with fire,” she stated.

Operating 9-5 vs . staying a whole-time artist

Even when she briefly was functioning full-time in promoting or as an elementary teacher in New Iberia she was creating and advertising jewellery on the facet. Soon after various years of training she made the decision to attempt artwork whole-time for a person year.

“I imagined, ‘I can take in rice and beans for a calendar year,'” she stated with a smile.

She and husband Pat observed they could make a dwelling off their artwork, preparing in advance which shows they would show up at to offer their wares. Then the children joined them.

“I carried a folding newborn mattress,” Suzanne stated. “They went with us and slept below display screen desk at Jazz Fest at 1 or 2 years previous.”

They’re however touring, obtaining just concluded the newest Jazz Fest in New Orleans in April.

“Not having a steady revenue is the toughest component,” she admits, “but you plan for that. Some a long time are better than other individuals. Which is just the way daily life is.”

When the metallic she’s been torching is neat ample but however delicate, she bends it with her hand, reworking the flat design into a curved bracelet.

She tops it with a bezel she created earlier and will choose out a stone for it to maintain later. She drops the piece into a bowl of acid in a sink to eliminate the tarnish and then into a tumbler for a remaining polish.

“I have uncovered a lot of persistence doing this,” she reported. “It is not a occupation for folks with out persistence.”

Metalwork is a family members company

Pat Juneau wears a yellow Steen’s Cane Syrup T-shirt as he demonstrates how to crank the roller in Suzanne’s store, pressing patterns into the softened metal. Then he heads to the bigger shop on their property wherever he and son Andre make their sculptures.

“We’ve been executing this practically 50 yrs,” Pat claims.

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He began earning jewelry with Suzanne and over the a long time moved into blacksmithing and slicing metal. His approach has advanced to drawing out the designs for Andre to lower on the significant CNC equipment, or plasma cutter. Then Pat paints it, a stage he loves.

The method is collaborative but also specific.

“Every person will work individually undertaking their own factor,” Pat mentioned.

“We have a very good time,” Suzanne reported.

Their daughter, Angelique, could possibly do the job with them in Scott or in her possess property shop in New Iberia when she’s not training art at Epiphany Day College.

“I discovered using art classes and lessons and rising up all-around artwork expanded my vital wondering expertise, my creativeness, broadened my thoughts,” she stated. “It is fun to get to pass that on to young ones, to encourage them to come across a new way to determine anything out. In artwork you get to fix troubles and get to an end final result in a million various methods.”

Like her mother and father, she enjoys working with metallic and, admittedly, playing with fireplace. She finds inspiration in metal artifacts uncovered in the webpages of anthropology textbooks or shelves of museums.

“It truly is a medium that definitely catches my interest and you get to perform with fire and see what you can do,” Angelique claimed. “It is functional, and steel lasts.”

Get in touch with kid’s challenges reporter Leigh Guidry at [email protected] or on Twitter @LeighGGuidry.

This write-up at first appeared on Lafayette Day-to-day Advertiser: Juneau Metalworks participate in with fireplace, makes spouse and children business | Acadiana Makers