Forging a Love for Blacksmithing

Joy Brenneman ’11 wants everyone interested in blacksmithing to try it for themselves, so she wrote a book: “Contemporary Blacksmithing for Beginners.” The comprehensive volume offers 18 simple, step-by-step projects that produce effective, well-designed and usable household items. “I hope giving people essential knowledge helps them get started as they learn what tools to use and where to get material,” she says.

Experiences as a studio art major at Westmont provided some preparation, but Joy mostly discovered the industrial craft and art of blacksmithing when she accidentally stumbled into Santa Barbara Forge + Iron. The founders of this business, brothers Dan and Andy ’05 Patterson, make heirloom-quality custom metalwork, and they became her mentors. “I realized that I’d found what I’d been looking for, so I apprenticed with them,” she says. The book acknowledges their pivotal role in her career.

“I felt a gravitational pull on my life,” she says. “Blacksmithing, my North Star, my cornerstone, has become an important part of my life. It’s so much more than just a job.” In her shared Santa Ana blacksmith shop, tucked away in a small industrial space amidst pockets of artistic endeavors, Joy creates beautiful ornamental and architectural ironwork as small as door pulls and as large as a nine-foot sculpture of a tree for the exterior of the Shafter Library in Kern County.

Customers find her online (joyfireblacksmith.com), and she also makes items for her home, including furniture. “I enjoy the variety of blacksmithing and appreciate the mental and physical benefits of doing it,” she says. “I like creating functional things that people interact with, that support them in everyday life. I think it’s emotionally, spiritually and psychologically different to sit at a table made with care. I wish I could do that for more people.”

“I like creating functional things that people interact with, that support them in everyday life. I think it’s emotionally, spiritually and psychologically different to sit at a table made with care. I wish I could do that for more people.”

Joy learned about Westmont from her father, Don Brenneman ’79, who served in Uganda with Sports Outreach Institute. Longtime Westmont soccer coach Russ Carr ’56 started the organization to serve children living in poverty and those traumatized by war. Joy enrolled at Westmont because of Sue Savage, professor emeritus of art, who encouraged her and gave her permission to be an artist. Traveling with Europe Semester and studying in Italy enriched her education, and she got hands-on experience with bronze casting during her semester in Cortona.

Formative Westmont classes included printmaking with Martha Ensign Johnson and stone carving with Chris Rupp. “I loved messy, physical, difficult and dirty three-dimensional work,” she says. “I knew I was on the right path to finding a good fit for me.”

Joy lives in La Habra with her husband, Chris Gibson, a sociology professor at CSU Fullerton, and their young daughter and son. She earned a Master of Fine Arts at Claremont Graduate University, working in blacksmithing as well as photography with antique cameras and stained glass. She also teaches welding at Orange Coast Community College one day a week.

Describing herself as a blacksmith, artist, welder and teacher, Joy volunteers with the Society of Inclusive Blacksmiths. Few people would expect someone with her slight build and two small children to be a blacksmith. “It’s very important to me for people to see it as a modern, viable craft and to bring a greater variety into blacksmithing.”