Forged in Fire: The Explorations of Artist-Blacksmith Russell Jaqua

After receiving serious shrapnel wounds in Vietnam and spending six months in the hospital at Fort Dix, New Jersey, twenty-three-year-old Russell Jaqua went searching for himself by traveling to Africa.  The following is an excerpt from an early entry of his journal, written as he journeyed by boat from the Canary Islands to Spanish Sahara. 

December 26, 1970

I hold onto the hope that if I keep trucking and am not turned around or put down, I will find my place in the sun, my niche. I know that it is up to me to find it and that there is no guarantee and that it is not easy to find. I have known for some time just how incredibly low man can go. No one can experience a war and not know. What I have learned in Viet Nam is that there is nothing between me and the bottom, but my own will. The Big Question is what am I going to do with myself in regards to a vocation. At one time in my life, not so very long ago, it seemed to me that this question would more or less work itself out. But so far, I have decided on nothing particular.  I cannot say I want to be an X when I grow up.

But I have come up with a few requirements:

1.      that it does not leave me in a corner.

2.      that it involves an element of beauty.

3.      that I work for myself.

4.      that it supplements travel.

5.      it doesn’t necessarily have to make me rich.

6.      involves a certain amount of physical labor.

7.      that it enables me to be close to nature.

Artist-blacksmith Russell Jaqua, a leading artist in what came to be known as The New Iron Age of the American Craft Movement, was often asked to discuss his primary influences.

Jaqua’s response always included the extraordinary residency that Centrum provided him early in his career—a residency which hallowed him to develop the unique vocabulary and style of smithing that impacted an entire generation of artist-smiths and helped create a new genre of forged metal sculpture.

Jaqua came to his craft relatively late in life.

In Europe, blacksmith apprentices begin training early in their teen years. Jaqua’s route was far more circuitous. Before reporting to Army boot camp in 1968, he’d hitched from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Alaska to Mexico, knowing he might never get the chance to see North America again.