Delicate snowflake as durable art
It snows year-round for Costa Mesa resident Cole McLaughlin.
The artist, who grew up designing and working in his family’s precision sheet metal business, decided to combine his love for snow and metal-making expertise into creating giant snowflake art pieces.
McLaughlin, who runs the art and design company Revello Metal Craft, has more than 15 years of experience working with restaurant and hospitality design firms, interior designers and corporations. It only felt natural for McLaughlin, an avid snowboarder who calls Mammoth Lakes his second home, to start making metallic snowflake wall art as a hobby.
Friends and family caught on, asking him to create custom treatments for their homes. A client commissioned McLaughlin to make a piece for his Mammoth Lakes property.
“It just escalated,” he said of the project that began four years ago.
You might say he’s been creating a blizzard.
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Reclaiming metal
“Imagine that in Central Park,” McLaughlin said earlier this month at Nesai Restaurant in Newport Beach, pointing to a glowing cluster of metal bars intricately formed into the shape of a snowflake. The piece, about 4 feet high, was illuminated by lights beaming through drilled-in holes. It’s one of the many works in McLaughlin’s collection that he would love to be used as public art.
“Or that one,” he said, pointing to the opposite wall of the restaurant, which displayed the exhibit during the Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade weekend. “The assembly on that was bananas.”
The piece, titled “Driftwood,” was created from wrought iron forged into curved branches. McLaughlin turned to his friend, a third-generation blacksmith, to learn the specialized chiseling process.
To shape the steel, McLaughlin had to heat the metal by throwing the solid stock into a forge fueled by propane. After pulling the bars out of the oven, he pounded the metal with a power hammer and added texture with divots. He changed each bar’s angles and joined the pieces together, a process known as tack welding, and tweaked each branch into a symmetrical pattern onto a circular back plate. The process required more than 40 hours during a span of 20 Sundays.
“I’m not going to be a blacksmith,” McLaughlin said with a laugh. “That was definitely a challenge.”
But he is a scavenger, finding objects that could be repurposed in his art. About 70% of his pieces are made of reclaimed remnant metal. And during a work assignment, McLaughlin came across a friend who runs a business converting discarded glass for interior and exterior design. He brought crushed glass back to his manufacturing site, where he resined the material on a metal pattern depicting an intricately shaped snowflake.
“It looks like ice,” he said.
The flakes, which range in height from 2 to 6 feet and can weigh more than 100 pounds, debuted in 2012. After two years in the making, nearly 50 massive snowflakes were unveiled during McLaughlin’s show “Snowpocalypse” in Los Angeles. Among the invited guests were actor Drake Bell and Tris Imboden, drummer for the band Chicago.
“Rarely have I seen such creative usage of someone else’s metal refuse,” Imboden wrote on McLaughlin’s website. “I’m blown away by the work, just incredible work.”
Eric Beneker, owner of EB Design, which has created interiors and exteriors for hotels and restaurants in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, said he had just purchased a snowflake from the Arctic Series in McLaughlin’s inventory.
“They’re pretty much all unique,” Beneker said. “I want to buy another one.”
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‘A lot of work’
Each snowflake, McLaughlin said, is individual.
His pieces, which are sold in art and furnishing stores in Los Angeles, Palm Springs and San Clemente, cannot be duplicated at a production level. He’d like to collaborate with friends who work in the real estate industry and have his art sold and installed at hotels in Park City, Utah, and Aspen, Colo.
He has presented his collection at a variety of winter escapes, including the mountain art show at the Westin Monache Resort in Mammoth and Mammoth Mountain’s Night of Lights Festival. It was an achievement, he said, to be asked to display some of his pieces in the showroom of jewelry artist Kate Mesta at the World Market Center Las Vegas.
Mesta, a Laguna Beach designer, is known for her official line of “Dancing with the Stars” jewelry, which has been worn by show regulars Mark Ballas and Bruno Tonioli.
In the meantime, McLaughlin said, he likes to look up shapes and patterns by referring to photographs showcasing the intricacies of tiny snowflakes under a microscope.
“It’s a science and it’s fun, but it’s a lot of work,” said McLaughlin. “The true art appreciator will know what goes into it.”
REVELLO METAL CRAFT
Owner: Cole McLaughlin
Specialty: Metal snowflake art
Project founded: 2010
Information: Visit revellometal.com.