This time last year, Emily and Casey Lewis felt lucky to have any artwork to sell at Festival for the Eno, where the couple will be again this weekend. The work space of their business, Beechwood Metalworks, which was in a barn behind their Burlington home, had burned to the ground a week earlier.

"Casey was in the shop and I was outside with the children," Emily Lewis recalled. "Casey didn't have time to get anything out of there. It took six firetrucks to put the fire out. We didn't even have a hammer left." They think the fire started in a machine that contained liquid oxygen, which then further fueled the blaze.

Luckily, the flock of butterfly garden stakes they'd finished for the Eno show had survived. "Casey had just taken all the butterflies outside for me to paint," she said.

One year later, Beechwood Metalworks is in a new, larger building with three full-time employees and a calendar filled with metal sculpture projects.

"That fire is the best thing that could have happened to us," Lewis said.

Creative family: Emily, 30, grew up as Emily Lind in Hillsborough and credits her family with sparking her creativity. Her mother, Lisa Flinn, writes children's books, draws and paints, and her stepfather, Bill Flinn, is a metal worker. "My father doesn't have a job in art, but he likes to makes things with his hands," she said.

Lewis, however, wanted to be a large-animal veterinarian. After struggling with math and biology at UNC-Greensboro, she discovered she had learning disabilities. "I had wonderful teachers and counselors and they all asked me, 'What are you good at? What do you like to do?' I told them, 'what I really like to do is art.' So I went into the art department and loved it."

Metal magic: The one medium Lewis initially avoided was metal. "Growing up with a metal shop in the backyard, it was a chore. Like I'd have to prime and paint hundreds of feet of handrails, or help clean up." But it was something she was familiar with, so she decided to learn the technical end. "It was really fun, and I loved the program. I got my own perspective and experience." She met her future husband, Casey, in a clay course. "It was like kindergarten. We were sitting across from each other playing with clay."

All shapes: Burlington native Casey Lewis, 33, started out wood carving and then added metal. "He's able to see shapes in wood and metal that most people don't," Emily Lewis said. "He wants to find hardest thing to do and figure it out, whatever it is." The couple, married since 2000, have two daughters, ages 3 and 4.

First jobs: After they graduated from college, in the late 1990s, Emily Lewis worked at Stone Line Designs in Hillsborough, a high-end office furniture company, as its first metal worker. "It was a great place to work," she said. "Everyone was such an amazing craftsperson." She then went to work with her stepfather until 2002, when she and Casey decided to open shop.

He meanwhile, had gotten a job at a sawmill and a fabrication shop. "He liked it because he wanted to know all about the equipment and machinery, which we didn't really learn in college. He got a lot of experience with these large, large pieces of equipment."

Moonlighting at home: "We started our business in 2002 while we still had other jobs," Lewis said. They bought a computerized plasma cutter, "like a giant Etch a Sketch," she said. "We'd work until midnight in the barn behind our house." They started to make butterfly garden stakes and copper sun wall art to sell at local shows. When they were expecting their first child, Casey's job at the sawmill ended.

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