1. THE LIFE OF A ‘FEMALE’ METALWORKER | Not a nepo baby
Big warm welcomes, blessings and chefs kisses. I thought I would start by mentioning just a handful of the people who blow my mind……
Shon Faye, Meghan Jayne Crabbe, Liv Little, Naomi Shimada and Roxane Gay are so inspiring via their writing. Their willingness to share and their beautiful words are both comforting to the soul and invigorating. I have also become a patreon of Gemma Cairney’s page on Patreon and that’s a beautiful and expansive space too you could consider joining.
Another shout out is for the biggest genius of all, Esther Perel. Her monthly newsletter encourages us all to question and build emotional intelligence.
I’ve never felt comfortable trying to make my life into sellable social media content. I think the magic of life mostly happens offline and it’s easy to fall into unhealthy online patterns. However, I honestly don’t know where we’d be as a society without the genius minds of Kelechi, Munya and Shabazsays +++++++ who share so generously online so I’m starting this blog.
I’d like to note some thoughts from the last wild and mad decade of my life as a prop maker, mould maker, set builder, art fabricator, metalworker and my last title ‘engineer’ - a bit of a stretch.
Job numero 1: Prop Maker
I’d never really thought about prop making in any capacity before I worked as one or, of it as a viable career. That’s probably because its not.
I’d never thought about how a gun that looks completely realistic in a film is actually, spoiler alert, made of soft foam with lots of cable tie armatures suspended inside it. Getting the foam to the right consistency takes skilled alchemy and ratio knowledge that you can only build over time through doing. Most prop guns are made super squishy; so that double 07 can get repeatedly smashed around by his Walther PPK without ruining his face for the ladies. Here’s one I made earlier:
Foam Walther PPK (Prop)
If you’re looking to get into the industry this is how I got into the industry - I wrote a letter to a woman who ran a prop making company asking for a job.
On my first day I went to the largest armoury in England. I was locked in what can only be described as a dungeon with all the weapons you could think of. This is it I thought, as someone who frequently worries about getting murdered, ironically, I’m going to get murdered in a room full of weapons by an old man in a fleece stinking of about 5 centuries worth of fags.
What then followed was four years of making replica weapons and objects for really famous films, big franchises that I didn’t watch. I would make swords for Game of Thrones and never get my name on the credits. More so, I used to have a lot of foam stuck in my hair.
I learnt to make perfect silicone/fibre glass moulds with seam lines of perfection, cast all kinds of mastery and I met one of my favourite people. We made up a fast paced and impressively productive mould making department, mostly just the two of us. Occasionally an indigenous Watford hornet we named Cornetto would fly into the workshop, making me flee a mould at a crucial moment in the pouring process.
I had a photo montage on my phone of my male colleague who sat in his chair for most of his working day, staring at the wall whilst he got paid big bucks. I got so fed up of cleaning up after him that once, after cleaning up after him, fighting back tears, I asked him to clean up after himself. He stared at me blankly and said nothing.
I burst into my bosses office, looking for some sort of justice and, after talking to him she informed me that I had been quite threatening.
I left this role because my wages got cut, which probably makes you think I’m an awful employee. I’m not. I’m the opposite. It’s just the wild wild prop west out there.
Job numero 2: Art fabricator
I’d never heard of art fabrication before I worked in it either. I guess working in jobs I’ve never heard of before is my kink. I worked mostly as a metalworker. These were the years where I had less foam stuck in my hair and a lot more metal in my eye. Thank you to the staff of Moorfields Hospital for keeping me in peak ophthalmic health.
Being a fabricator, it’s cold. I spent years covered in dirt, making friends in dusty dirty changing rooms and loving it. It’s not for everyone, but I was grateful to live in a functioning strong body that allowed me to build massive structures. Various systems are rigged in my favour in terms of my class and race. I unknowingly muscled my way into an industry that under represents a huge range of demographics across many identities. This desperately needs to change. It’s pointless for me to acknowledge this unless I take action, so I write myself a list of anti-racist/decent behaviours each month on my phone to keep myself accountable (although it feels miniscule). I’ve worked on some amazing teams, with people of all genders and ages but the majority of most teams are Caucasian, which is representative of who has access to The Arts in wider society.
If the existentialism of our societies gets too much the prop/art world lends itself to some welcome escapism: you can be in a lift with multiple octopus tentacles, hang off the side of a giant meteorite the size of a warehouse or walk into a space themed world.
Being a ‘female’ metalworker made me feel so powerful but it left me weirdly unemployable to many other roles and industries even though my CV is full to the brim. I mostly welded every day, learnt engineering techniques and how to construct art to make it sneakily stand up on its own, usually with a hidden spiggot. It was also completely exhausting. The sexism is subtle but a constant reminder that it’s weird that you’re there doing metalwork. It’s in the attitudes of clients, the stares, it’s the boss telling you that you have lovely eyelashes in the middle of a meeting about metal, the PPE always being too big making it dangerous, the lack of bins in the toilets for people who menstruate, the ‘female’ overalls having a cinched in waist. Yada yada yada.
This cinch will leave you breathless if you are actually trying to do anything at all.
People love to say ‘in this day and age’ as though human progression is linear and not messy and incremental like us. I do think it is a shame that in this day and age to be a ‘female’ metalworker interested in fabrication, construction and machinery is seen as radical. I love driving a forklift or a cherry picker or sitting on top of a huge metal sculpture. I was the first female to gain a forklift license in the history of a company I worked for. That was so exciting although I did have to endure a few hours of lessons where an ex military person shouted CHICANE repeatedly at me whilst I ran over tiny cones.
I asked for a pay rise in this role as I had worked my way up the pay scale for a few years in this job. I didn’t get an answer for months and then, sure enough, it happened.
A PAY CUT!
The hustle was/is, untenable?
This was not a particularly lucrative financial decade for me as you can probably tell and it did not correlate with the high rates of physical energy expenditure. I find the whole thing semi bombastic even now, years later. It took me a long while to recognise that some people have second incomes, rich spouses, are in a union or are just being paid better than I was, giving them a sense of ease I completely lost. The instability and constant devaluation can begin to eat away at your self esteem.
However, I’m so grateful to a generation of elders who generously showed me how to use their tools and construction techniques whilst I slowly snapped all their drill bits and narrowly avoided loosing my phalanges.
I worked on a film in the carpentry department and in this capacity felt way out of my depth, the technical drawings were all in inches and feet and I’m English. In this scenario, I actually asked to be paid less because I felt like a fraud but they declined my offer. One of the guys said it was really refreshing to work with a female doing carpentry and hoped it happened more.
The last team I was on was three of us. Me, my incredible co worker who was a woman of colour and our head of department who was an incredibly knowledgeable man of age. This team felt quietly progressive and whilst I think it took my boss a hot minute to get his head around managing two young women, he was really proud of us as a team. It makes me so happy about what can be produced between a team of people and what we can make using our hands. With technical knowledge comes the magic of being able to dream as big as the sky baby.
I naively believed that all artists make their own work but that’s a huge and nuanced discussion altogether. I don’t recall signing any NDA’s but I like a peaceful life vacant of legal disputes so I’ll keep things vague about the projects I’ve worked on.
It’s unrealistic to expect artists to be technical marvels in all areas of making especially with so many technological and material advances and why limit expansive imaginations to technicalities? However, I think there is a general growing lack of making and fixing skills, erased as we thrash ourselves deeper into digital realms and less IRL. It is much more lucrative to create funny Tik Tok content than to make a fibreglass mould. One is way less stinky. I’ll let you decide.
There’s a multidimensional discussion to have about art creation and ownership. Is it shady that art fabricators and painters essentially create work and then aren’t allowed to even visit it in a gallery, let alone be acknowledged? Is it shady goings ons? Or is it kosher because it is a contract; you pay me and I’ll make some art for you with my technical skills? I certainly feel grateful to have worked on some incredible projects, with some beautiful minds who have unimaginable technical abilities. Often, it is the art that seems the most whimsical that requires such monumental design or engineering and extensive knowledge of materials.
When Lily Allen says we should be more concerned about political nepo babies (of course) but not so much creative ones, only a nepo baby could say that (no shade to Lily, I don’t know her). It only takes getting a hold of one email address to potentially change your whole career trajectory, which is a lot easier if it’s just your family that you need to email.
After working my tushy off in these industries, I still couldn’t tell you how to get a job in them and barely have any contacts right now. I thought being ghosted was just for the dating world but turns out companies can ghost you too. That’s, business, baby?
As my mate used to say, ‘more espresso, less depresso’.
Have a coffee and keep things moving mi amor.
Thank you for reading. Catch you next time!
【ｒｅｃｏｍ ｍｅｎｄａｔｉｏｎｓ】
The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies by Sathnam Sanghera
