Welding artist: Brian Wedgworth

Brian Wedgworth compares his artistic process to a dance.

He moves about his studio in downtown Harlingen working on as many as 15 pieces at a time. Whenever he gets to a stopping point or a need to pause on a particular work, he moves on rather than get bogged down.

"It's a delicate dance," Wedgworth said. "They kind of simultaneously come together ... I already have the ideas in mind but the work just flows better."

The latest one-man show for the 34-year-old artist, Around & Back Again, opens with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. today at Galeria 409 in Brownsville.

"My show is called Around & Back Again because I'm revisiting old ideas, things that have been around the shop for a while, that got pushed aside," he said. "I'm bringing them back to the forefront."

The concepts for the sculptures may have been sketched out and in some cases parts have already been cut out. But Wedgworth has completed them all recently.

"It's been fun getting back in the studio ... exploring new directions as well," he said. "I've been working on pieces from tabletop size to monumental."

He calls his larger pieces "yard bling." Wedgworth's "Ascension," recently installed in the McAllen Arts District, is 17-feet tall and sits on a 4-foot base. It took a crane and a crew for the artist to put it in place.

"I've always tinkered with stuff since I was a kid," he said. "I was always taking things apart and putting them back together."

His father is a welder in the oilfields and Wedgworth learned the skill early. But it was always separate from his art. "In high school I was always drawing. And then when I got to college, I was wandering through the (University of Texas-Pan American) art department. I knew how to weld and I knew how to draw. I never thought to put the two together until I found the art department and started making sculpture."

Wedgworth began his art career in 1993 and went full-time as an artist in 2000. He and his wife Aleida opened their studio in 2004. Aleida Garcia Wedgworth is a jewelry artist.

Wedgworth has worked with all sorts of artistic media from clay to wood, but stuck on steel.

"I like the permanence of it," he said. "Clay breaks and wood burns. Steel doesn't. It'll survive a house fire."

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