When would-be welders walk into Stacey Mrva’s studio, she’ll likely hand them some metal. By the time they leave, those pieces will be bent and fused into recognizable shapes like pumpkins, dragonflies and reindeer — beautiful decor ready to be displayed on mantels.
But each object is a bonus. The experience, according to Mrva, is the real takeaway.
“This isn’t painting with a twist,” she said. “We’re not here to just hang out and have some wine and do a little painting. We’re getting dirty. You’re wearing the equipment. There’s sparks flying.”
Mrva offers weekly women’s welding workshops at her Ironwood Studios in Springwater, a converted barn and farmhouse dating back to 1847. The classes are kept small, between four and six people, so that everyone can actually get to know each other.
One student has taken 18 different workshops.
Ironwood also offers classes for women in recovery as well as teen girls in Livingston County, partially funded through the Genesee Valley Council of the Arts. Much like the suggested age range for board games, her attendees’ ages have run the gamut, from eight to 83.
As a rite of passage, the workshoppers — retirees, creatives, adventurers — use chalk to write their initials on a metal plate. Then Mrva fires up the welding machine, and the women trace the letters using a blast of ultraviolet light.
She calls the act of using the welding gun “empowering.”
“I always tell people it’s a lot like cooking because you can hear when the weld is right,” Mrva said. “When it starts to not sound right, you adjust what you’re doing.”
She first welded at Syracuse University, where she planned to study jewelry making and metalsmithing but ended up a sculptor. Mrva’s very first welding machine, a graduation gift from her parents, still sits on the floor in her barn.
Her sculpture work colors the South Wedge, where she lived for many years before moving south. Mrva’s bespoke iron benches dot South Clinton Avenue, and she regularly presented work at former neighborhood mainstay Tap and Mallet.
One of her latest commissions can be seen in the village of Churchville: a bicycle in honor of local 19th-century suffragist and temperance activist Frances Willard.
“I didn’t learn in trade school,” Mrva said. “In art school, they’re like, ‘There’s the welder,’ and you figure it out. So, I’m self taught. I tell the ladies in class, ‘I don’t know the technical ins and outs of how this thing works. To me, it’s like magic, which is kind of more fun to think of it that way.”
Mrva lives in the farmhouse near the barn with her husband, Thomas Richens, a musician and drum tech for national touring bands like Megadeth and Babymetal. They bought the three acres of land in 2020 and transformed the barn, previously an antique shop, into her studio.
But there were risks. They both worked in nontraditional, creative fields not necessarily thriving during the pandemic.
Then the previous owners told them about the tree growing near the barn: an ironwood.
“I immediately got goosebumps,” Mrva said, “like, this is meant to be.”
After renovations, she began offering workshops in 2022. Mrva’s impulse to teach was sparked by a workshop she’d led at Edison Career & Technical High School where she was “watching these young women supporting each other, cheering each other on and making mistakes. They could just be themselves and try and fail and help each other out. That was the coolest energy.”
A few years in, the second floor of the barn is still a work in progress. But a light fixture on the ceiling made out of an old drum kit points to its potential future as a music space.
“Upstairs will definitely be some music, some live stuff, some recording, some events and drum clinics,” Richens said.
Until then, when he’s not on tour, Richens is around to help any way he can. For Mrva’s birthday, he gave her a new welding helmet. Afterward, she customized it with Ironwood’s “Find Your Spark” slogan.
The sparks are literal. The welding gun heats up to several thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and anyone standing near it is safest in a helmet and long sleeves. The process requires focus and being present. Mrva said that might be why one attendee likened Ironwood Studios to “a spa with sparks.”
Stacy Porcelli, a faithful patron who now helps Mrva teach some of the classes, wouldn’t go that far. But she gets it.
“You have to be in the moment,” Porcelli said. “You’re kind of hyper-aware, especially the first time. And it’s really cool, like, ‘Oh, this isn’t so scary.’ It feels like you learned something.”
Patrick Hosken is CITY’s arts reporter. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
