Love of welding brings an artist full circle

With several welders in her family and a childhood spent in the Rust Belt, Tamera Mulanix was captivated by metalwork from an early age.

"My grandfather was an industrial welder, my uncle was a welder, and several cousins, too," said Mulanix, 46, who creates indoor and outdoor metal art from her studio in Pittsboro. "My uncle was the only one who made art, though, and he wasn't encouraged at all. I still have a little piece he gave me for my birthday, a flower made from a spoon and a fork sitting on a block of wood."

So while she was surrounded by metal during her years in Grand Blanc, Mich., a suburb of Flint, Mulanix found more despair than inspiration there. "It was just a very depressed area," she recalled. "It wasn't me. I couldn't find my wings. I couldn't wait to get out of there."

Then she met Vernon Mulanix.

"He was getting his MBA and was trying to get out of Flint, too," she said. "He'd been my boyfriend's best friend in eighth grade - we didn't meet back up until we were 34. We decided to escape together."

They chose Raleigh because of its healthy business climate, and she returned to what she knew - the vending business, specifically touch screen video games. She had been part of her family's vending business in Michigan, so it was familiar territory.

Drawn to Pittsboro

In 2001, happy to settle in North Carolina, they bought a house in Pittsboro, having no idea of Chatham County's reputation as a magnet for artists.

Meanwhile, Mulanix never lost her attraction to metal.

"It got to be a joke between Vernon and me. If we'd see something really cool made from metal, like a table or a piece of artwork, I'd always say, 'If I learned to weld, I could make that.' "

That first year in Pittsboro she took a welding class at Central Carolina Community College.

"I thought: Well, we're in the country, so it's probably going to be for farmers fixing plows," she said. "I walked into the class, and there were all these artists and photographers. And I just fell in love with welding. It kind of scared me. I thought: I need to take another class and see if it sticks. I did, and I still loved it."

She bought basic welding equipment and starting working out of her garage. Meanwhile, she'd gotten out of the vending business and her husband had been laid off.

"We were doing anything to make money, pet-sitting, cleaning houses; Vernon was working as a handyman." (He went on to open his own business, Aria Skin & Laser Spa in Chapel Hill) With just a year of metalwork under her torch, she applied to show her work at the Chatham Studio Tour.

"I got rejected," she said. "It was awful, but it really pushed me because it got me to improve. Then Vance [Remick] from the Pittsboro General Store told me, 'Bring your work in here.' I did, and I sold pieces - I was only making yard art - and also started to make lamps."

She happened was at the store one day when the director of the Chatham Artists Guild stopped by.

"She was looking at the tags on my work and saw they were mine. She said, 'You've got to apply to the studio tour again.' That felt so good."

And indeed she got in, doing her first tour in 2002.

"Now that's really my big time of year," she said. "It's crazy. I have like 500 people come through."

Mulanix is appreciative of her good fortune after moving to Chatham County.

"There's such a sense of community," she said. "The artists I've met, everyone's been so helpful. So has Francis Vega and his metal group in Durham."

The allure of a star

Mulanix continues to do functional and artistic work, including candleholders, lamps, tables and large sculptures, and she sells her work at several area craft stores.

Her most popular piece is a nine-pointed star, which she makes in several versions, from smaller wall hangings to bigger sculptures, the largest of which sits in front of Carrboro Town Hall.

"The star represents the unity of all faiths, and its center is the divine from which they all originate," she said. "I think people appreciate that it has a story."

The divine is a theme that is present in much of Mulanix's work, a reflection of her Bahai faith, which emphasizes the spiritual unity of humankind.

"I've been a Bahai since I was 15," she said. "We believe there's only one god and that all prophets are of the same essence, and that we're all of the human race."

In the faith, art is revered. "It's considered a form of worship," she said. "In its highest expression, art should be used to promote unity and peace and the individual's personal growth. That's within the writings of the faith."

Mulanix said she tries to channel connections between art and soul into her work.

"When I'm in my studio, I try to get out of the way," she said. "I put on prayers put to music, which helps me get in a certain space. The ultimate when I'm working is to be able to totally shut out what I want and let the divine spirit take over. I guess it's what some people call the zone. I think all artists feel it in their own way."

Her latest body of work, to which she's started to incorporate clay and glass adornments, is forged steel trees whose branches reach for the sky like twisted spaghetti noodles and whose roots wrap around a rock base.

"They're 3 feet tall, and I clean each piece, shape and weld it. It's really quite a process," she said. "The first tree I made, I brought it to an open studio preview show, and this woman stood in front of it and she started to cry. 'I have to have this,' she told me. For an artist, that's the ultimate compliment, to have someone moved by your art."

Know an artist doing interesting work? Send story suggestions to diane@bydianedaniel.com.

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