It’s never too late to start welding — that’s the lesson we can learn from Cynthia Daniel, who has a yard full of metal art to prove it!
Dallas welder transforms trash into garden sculptures
Monday, February 15, 2010
By DIANE REISCHEL / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning NewsCynthia Daniel keeps a gangly old muffler in her carport, a silent lump she communes with, waiting for it to talk.
With age comes patience, says Daniel, a graphic artist for a Dallas publishing firm and a constant dreamer of trash. She’s more than a dreamer.
In recent years, this late-blooming welder has twisted, fired and honed a colony of eye-popping yard mates, some migrating to local sculpture shows, others charming their way into admirers’ back yards.
Her lively characters morph from the lowliest of throwaways, “found metal” she lifts from country lanes, junk yards and on quests through East Dallas for “big trash.”
Scraps speak to her, and she listens.
“I look at them every day in my yard, and they become something,” she says of her procedure for turning tractor springs, grilles or saw teeth into fish, flamingo or duck.
“Lately, I’m into fan blades. They become petals on flowers.”
