Naval Air Station Whidbey Island is home to the new Pacific Northwest Naval Air Museum.

Open year round, this museum features a lovingly restored World War II Catalina and celebrates naval aviation through exhibits, tours, reenlistments and events.

Information at PNWNAM.org.

Blacksmiths were known as alchemists because they turned Earth into tools.

I work with air, earth, fire, and water.

It takes a lot of energy to make what I do turning elements into in my situation artwork instead of tools.

The city of Cle Elum was named after the local river, which the Kittitas band of the Yakima tribe had dubbed “swift water” long before.

The area drew settlers to eastern Washington in the 1880s, after coal deposits were discovered in nearby Roslyn.

Miners showed up with forged iron picks, shovels, and sledgehammers... and as the Northern Pacific Railway chugged westward, more workers arrived with spikes and crowbars to lay and repair the rails.

Just outside downtown, on a pine forested slope, blacksmith Maria Cristalli plies her own tools from a centuries old trade.

In her hands, hammers, chisels and anvils are used to forge iron and steel into art that echoes the surrounding natural landscape.

I have a welding station there steel rack, shorts, and that's my forge.

- Lovely.

- I have two power hammers.

And this is my anvil.

- Anvil just like in the cartoons.

- Yeah!

A lot of tools for making textures and metal, and these are all hammer tools.

- Blacksmithing is such an old art form.

There's a phrase you've told me about “the king of...” “Blacksmithing, the king of crafts?” Yeah.

Because we make our own tools, and we supplied tooling for other crafts as well.

- There's something very meta about making your own tools with your own tools.

And does that make you feel connected... To the past?

- To the past, yeah.

Kind of.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Basically, I'm using traditional techniques.

I tend to explore more modern you know, expression of iron.

On a walk at the nearby Yakima River Canyon, Cristalli points to the geological features that have influenced and inspired her work since she moved here from Seattle 16 years ago.

She's particularly drawn to rock formations and their varied textures, which tell age old stories in their surfaces.

I've always loved this canyon.

I love the rugged hills, the bare hills, and the lichens and weeds.

You know, sometimes I'll pick a weed and make a sculpture out of that.

I like this land because you can see the history.

You can see at some point something changed and the rocks went sideways, and it was probably millions of years in between.

And it's just it reminds me that, like, our lifetime is so short and I find it really fascinating.

So when you are looking at something like this rock formation, the basalt and the columns, and you go back into the studio, are you thinking, “I want to try to replicate that,” or “I want to do my own spin on it?” I take some elements and I also do my own spin with the texture.

The different textures catch light, so it really adds a lot of depth to the material.

Which you can't really get just fabricating.

You can only get that with forging.

It's all kind of coming together.

Back in the studio, Cristalli sets to work on a piece inspired by the basalt columns that pop up like pipe organs across eastern Washington.

Blacksmithing has been associated with alchemy.

Is this the part that feels the most magical to you?

Yeah.

It's transforming something raw and plain into something beautiful.

Blacksmithing takes decades to master.

Cristalli has spent 30 years honing her craft... including an early 90s stint at Seattle's famed Black Dog Forge, where she hammered on metal while grunge bands hammered out songs in the basement rehearsal studio.

Creating a basalt column from forged steel takes many steps.

Cristalli cuts the shape with a bandsaw and hammers in the texture, eventually welding, grinding and heating the piece in the forge.

Wow!

That throws a lot of heat off.

Yeah, and all those little scale bubbles... - Yes.

- will add texture to the final piece.

- But you can still see your original texture in there.

That's amazing.

Wow.

It's sizzling.

So once it's cool, I'll get all this off.

I'll clean it with a wire brush.

After years of making architectural iron work like gates, garden features, and decorative scrolls, Cristalli is now leaning into the sculptural side of her work, creating art pieces that nod to the natural world.

These abstract works recall curious lichen tubes, the craggy surface of rocks, the silvery shine of charred wood... even gold glints of sun.

These are great.

They look so substantial.

They don't look hollow at all.

- Yeah.

- You've said that of late you're personally more interested in expressing your own voice artistically.

Yeah, yeah.

What is that voice saying?

That voice wants to make sculpture instead of architectural work.

I am really been enjoying working kind of the way I have in the direction I'm going, using the natural world around me as an inspiration.

This is one of the pieces I just recently completed, and it's meant to be like the end of a log the burned.

Yeah, the rings.

Yeah.

And since we're here in Cle Elum, which has seen a lot of wildfires, is that related to this work?

I think that I started when I went to wildfire areas, trees that were very burnt.

I started noticing, you know, the texture in them.

And even in a fire pit, you know, it's like this really beautiful textures in there.

- Do you think your work has taken this direction because you moved out here to Cle Elum?

Yeah, definitely.

Just being surrounded by nature and just looking at the world around me and I just get inspiration.

Cristalli's art is a kind of closed loop of creation, as the sources of her inspiration also serve as the tools of her trade... fire... air... water... and earth.

This series was made possible in part with the generous support of Pacific Northwest Naval Air Museum.