Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

You are all about combat ready art.

Yes.

Is it a safe place to be?

It’s the safest place to be.

We see in front of us a bunch of knives.

There’s a sword.

I even see a baseball bat behind us.

There are skulls.

I have ask you to introduce us to your art.

So Combat Ready Art is a blacksmithing forge and metal art studio at Park Trade Center in downtown Kalamazoo.

It was founded by my husband, Jon Reeves.

I started here when my youngest started classes with Jon, and then when John and I started dating, I started helping with some of the business parts of it and then learning forging.

Then I became became a co owner a few years ago.

and classes just took off.

Everybody wanted experiences, and so teaching the classes was the experience, and then they get to take something home, too.

And then last year, my husband passed away, so now I’m the co owner, and I like to think of it that he started it, we grew it together, and now it’s my responsibility to continue it.

Combat ready art.

More about the name So the origin of the name was somebody was hanging a piece of my husband’s art, and it dropped, and it broke the floor and not the art.

And the person said, "Well, that’s combat ready."

So my husband liked the name.

But it also fit because you can have a knife, and it’s very practical, but it can also be really beautiful.

Art doesn’t have to just be pretty.

It can also be practical and useful.. So, I want to get into the classes, but.

are we literally making knives?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

The railroad spike knife?

That’s the most popular choice.

It’s a great beginner knife.

It has a lot of material.

It’s a little forgiving.

Metal itself is very forgiving, so you can hit it as hard as you want.

Kind of joke, you can get all your anger issues out.

But then you have to pull it back.

And so you’re channeling that negative energy that we all have, no matter how old you are.

You know, we start classes at nine years old.

The oldest has been 87 years old.

We all have that negative energy So you’re channeling that out, but then you’re also creat creating something from it.

So it becomes very therapeutic.

Then we have the billet knife class where you can make like a kitchen knife or camp knife.

We have Damascus.

So we’re using different layers of steel, and in the middle is called 15 and 20.

It has a high nickel content, so it gets shiny.

You have to let it soak in ferret chloride for about 20 minutes, and that only reacts to not the 15 and 20.

It makes all the other steels darker.

And so then that’s how you get that contrast.

This particular one had copper with it.

And then, of course, the ultimate, which is kind of just everything what you learned about shaping a blade in the railroad spike is exactly the same with the sword.

You need the patienceience from the Damascus.

You’ve learned a little bit from the short sword, and so then you can start on the full sword, because everybody eventually wants a sword.

But we do traditional blacksmithing as well.. The first project, technically, everybody should do, even though they all want a knife.

To get their hands.

Yeah, is a hook.

The hook is the practical form.

The snake is the artistic form.

And so our snakes have little eyebrows, and, you know, you can make them as angry or I make little anxiety snakes.

But then we also have the steel flowers.

The flowers don’t have anything in the forge., but you’re plasma cutting them out of the steel, which is very fun.

And then you’re cold shaping them with different hammers and welding it together.

So you learn a different side of the studio So, first, we’re going to get the fire going a little bit more.

This is just coal and air.

It’s Bithamus coal, so it’s made for blacksmithing.

It’s a much more traditional way to blacksmith as well.

I’m gonna do a railroad spike knife today.

So the railroad spikes are used railroad spikes.

We buy them through an authorized dealer.

So you see it’s starting to get the color.

We want it to become the color of the flame.

So that bright yellow color Now, that’s a good color to start.

So first, we’re just hammering down.

You want to try to hammer from your shoulder and not your wrist just to save energy.

You don’t have to go fast, either.

Nice, good, strong strokes are good.

Flip it every once in a while.

The anvil is doing the other side, so as you’re hammering, one side, the anvil is kind of smoothing out the other side.

So we have it kind of that initial thinness, and now we want to start shaping it.

You shap you shape it finally hitting it in certain points.

So I want to make this a little wider, so I’m just going to work along the cutting edge side.

Still hitting that down straight.

But that starts to push that material, out.

We want to get that point in there and get it a little bit thinner.

The fire can burn at about 2,800 degrees, and the only way to check what temperature it is is to pull it out and check it, which doesn’t hurt the steel at all.

So we’re going to drive that tip in a little bit more.

If you bring it right up to the edge and hit it an angle, you can really get a good tip in there, and then still flattening it down.

So that’s a nice shape.

You can make it whatever you want.

If I wanted it straight, I could just straighten that out.

Thinness wise is good.

You want to have a little bit to play on the grinder without grinding an entire spike away.

So now we’re getting the handle hot, keeping the blade out of the fire Gonna capture it blade down in the vise.

Put the twisting wrench around, and walk clockwise one time.

Got to ignore this stick.

There we go.

And then that’s the twist.

So personally, I like the curve in the handle.

If I wanted to straighten it out, I would hit it with a baseball bat on the stump there.

But that looks pretty good.

So now we’ll get the blade warm.

I’ll put it in the vice and make sure it’s straight straight, and then we let it cool off.

So now we have it shaped, rough shaped.

Now we need to clean it up.

We’re cleaning up what we want shiny, and also tweaking the profile.

Every once in a while, because of friction, put in the water.

The grinders are very fun, very powerful If you’ve never used a grinder before the first five seconds are terrifying, then it’ll be on your wishlist.

So now this is pretty clean, so, start the cutting eds.

You angle it just a tiny bit, like 10 to 15 degrees.

And that bevel starts, so all of that will be gone.

Then we do want to clean up the head and grind that weld off.

And I just want to bring a little bit of contrast to that handle, so we’ll just grind those corners down a little bit.

So then that’ll be some nice contrast on the handles, too.

All right.

More of the same, then.

we’re looking at your art, are all of these are is this your work??

Is this your student’s work?

And I have to ask, what is your favorite?"

So this is these are all my pieces.

On the table right now, I have well, I have three favorites.

So the snakeake, just hammering the knot in the steel, that was just fun to do.

Very good hammer practice.

The sword will always have kind of a special place in my heart.

You know, it’s the biggest piece I had.

The demascus, this particular one, is a Kumai Damascus That has been the subject of many spectacular failures.

And so this was the first one that stuck together and cuts and everything.

So that’s always fun to do.

My absolute favorite piece that we ever did in the Forge is the Piece for Binder Park Zoo, though.

12 foot by 9 foot piece that’s’s on the fence that leads up to the wolf exhibit.

No doubt this is art.

Is this a niche?

Where do you fit?

You’re very unique.

Mm hmm.

mm hmm.

Well, and if you look throughout history, there have been weapons and beautiful weapons that are now in museums and still being replicated, of course, today and used today.

You could think of these almost a sculpture, too.

You’re shaping how you want it to be.

So, you have your artistic vision, but there is a little compromise with the steel, too.

It has a dream for its next life as well But you learn how to shape that, much like you would with clay, really.

And just like a bowl or a vase would be beautiful and art.

The same is true for not knives.

Just because they’re sharp and considered a weapon doesn’t mean that they’re not beautiful in pieces of art.

Mr.

Jake, you do it the way you want to, says your statement on your website.

Yeah, first of all, congratulations doing great work with your photography and obviously having studied film.

What does it mean that you do it the way you want to?

That’s a really good question, I guess.

Um.. I’ve done a lot of self teaching.

My partner has taught me some stuff as well, because they did a photography class My partner was actually the one that taught me how to do, um the printing in the dark room.

Um, so big shout out to CC for that.

I built my own dark room in my basement, and it’s just this crude frame with blankets over it to block out the light.

You know, I’m not so concerned about being so precisecise or about the rules.

I’m trying to make images that I love and trying to do it, you know, have the process be true to who I am, which I’m kind of, by the seat of my pants sometimes.

Not a bad way to be.

Yeah.

So what’s your niche?

How would you describe what you do to someone?

That’s a very good question, also.

I struggle with that, actually, describing what I do.

I do like to shoot a lot of close ups, so I do you know, a lot of floral stuff, but not.

I don’t think I do it in the traditional sense, especially because I do mostly black and white.

A lot of, like, even my nature and floral photos.

It’s a lot more about the shape and the composition of the photo instead of, you know, just the fact that it’s a pretty flower.

What’s the advantage of a black and white shot?

I think sometimes color can distract from the photo.

So if you get the colors from wrong, for example, it can detract from the lighting, it can detract from your subject So I think black and white, it really boils it down to how you compose the photo and the shape of the subject.

It’s simpler in a way, but it’s more timeless in that way, I think.

I’ve enjoyed learning that as well, ’cause it’s something you have to learn.

Is this always going to be a learning profession for you?

Do you foresee?

Yeah, definitely, definitely.

I mean, I wasn’t even developing my own film until this year.

What’s it take to develop film?

To develop film, it takes something that I’m not very good at, which is being able to work with your hands in the complete darkness.

I’m gonna make myself look like such an amateur.

Okay, so.

I loaded my negative.

I just have to adjust my dimensions from my paper.

I’m doing 8 by 10s.

So I’m gonna give myself, like, a quarter inch quarter.

And then actually, I’m gonna reach right above you here.

So I just need to kind of zoom my picture in so I get everything I want in the the frame.

It’s very nice working under a red light, because, like, if you do color enlarging, you have to work in complete darkness, and I’m not smart enough to be able to handle that.

I’m gonna drop it down to F8.

So I’m just gonna expose little segments of my paper in in five second in intervals here.

Okey doke, I got to develop this now.

You.

Yeah, it’s gonna be a couple minutes, so the best thing I ever did was bring this stool in here.

And then my timer’s going off, so I’m gonna switch it.

The first chemical is developer, so it actually brings out what we expose onto the paper.

Then we put it in a stop bath, which stops it from developing, do that for 30 seconds, and then it goes into the fixer.

So I’m gonna reach behind you again and turn the light on.

Very high tech.

So what I’m looking for is I’m looking for how light the whites are compared to the paper, and I’m also looking at how dark the blacks are, so I can think about what contrast filter I want to use.

Honestly, so that’s five seconds, that’s 30 seconds.

So I kind of.

I like that’ because it looks like it was sunny.

I mean, it’s pretty bright, but maybe I’ll go somewhere in between there.

Can I reach over you again?

Mm hmm.

All right.

I’m going to go 12 seconds, and I’m going to try.

I’m gonna split the filters.

So I’m going to go 6 and 6 on two different filters.

You can really just get lost in time, and I just like listening to music while I’m down here working.

And it’s just just me with my headphones in, trying to get everything to look the way I want to.

It’s just nice sometimes.

All right.

It’s been a minute.

I’m gonna turn that light on.

Um.. Yeah, that’s, like, that’s exactly what I want.

Because the sky’s still, like, it’s gray, so it stands out against the paper, but it’s still, it’s bright, it looks like daylight.

The blacks are nice and black I like it.

So, basically what I do then is I just, um.

I keep my prints usually in the fixer just while I’m doing a few more, and then I take them upstairs to wash them all at once.

Um But yeah.

Take us to that moment when you see it happen.

You see the picture coming up that comes from a blank sheet.

Yeah.

It’s very different, especially for young people because we grew up with iPhones and digital cameras.

So it’s so cool to develop your own film and just, you take it out of the tank and hope you did it right, and it’s there.

It’s so rewarding.

What is it about your subjects?

It looks like you’re drawn into nature, the environment.

Yeah.

But what is that calling to you?

I do a lot of nature, but I also I’ve done quite a lot with things like barbed wire and fences and razor wire, and I often will double expose the two together, or I’ll shoot, you know, flowers coming through the fence, that kind of thing.

With black and white photography, it’s a lot about just the shape and the composition, flowersowers and things like that in nature.

They have such a powerful shape, especially when you take the color out.

It’s interesting.

It’s not like, oh, look at the color of that flower.

It’s so pretty.

It’s the shape of the petals, and the way you frame the stem in.

It’s just, it’s a way to almost shoot a portrait without a person.

Even with my landscape, that’s a lot about just the composition, the shapes, and the textures, and same, like, with my padlocks in my razor wire, there is personal meaning to me that I just relate to not only the process, but the way I’ve opened and closed and channeled my emotions into art and into people.

So it has a personal meaning to me, a lot of those ones, but it’s also, I just think they look cool sometimes, too.

That is something that really matters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Brazil was an important part of your life at one point.

Yeah.

Um, so when, just as I was graduating from college, I got linked up with one of the film and video professors there, Paul Chilson.

He was leading a study abroad to Brazil.

I’ve actually gone on three trips to Brazil, through that university.

Um, They involved teaching workshops about filmmaking, actually making films.

So I’ve shot documentary and narrative films while in Brazil with that team.

And I’ve also worked with Indigenous people in the Amazon The Indigenous people of the Amazon have a long history of filmmaking, and it’s been, not only was that the start of my visual arts journey, but the people that I’ve been able to connect with are so wonderful.

They’re so welcoming.

They’re fun to learn from and to teach to and to work with.

and learning in a multicultural and cross cultural environment, not only do I think it’s so important, but it’s so rewarding, and it really just elevates the experience and makes you want to keep pursuing the art that you’re pursuing.

What’s the dream?

I can’t really say I have a dream with photography.

I just started and found that I loved it.. I really just want to keep growing with it.

I want to see where it takes me.

I really enjoy doing visual media, photography.

I do filmmaking as well.

So I’m just kind of chasing that and see wherever it leads me.

Thanks, Jake.

You’ve got a great future ahead of me.

Yeah, thank you.

Appreciate you coming down.

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