Meet Trace OConnor | Metal Sculptor, Snow Carver

We had the good fortune of connecting with Trace OConnor and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Trace, how do you define success?
Going from failure to failure without loosing your enthusiasm.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
The next project in the works will be a fifteen-foot-tall pair of humanoid figures that are composed of 100% mirror polished, flat, stainless steel planes, both plated in 24 karat gold- a Herculean, six-month endeavor. The piece (I’m hoping) will help humanity heal after some of the divisive tumult of the past few years. This piece is about the human race.

But it wasn’t always like this, starting a big, high-profile, space-age sculpture. It started with a little chap rooting around in the giant piles of metals of a North Carolina scrapyard. I’d sniff around for hours looking for anything I could turn into clean but raw industrial sculpture. Was it easy? No. It was tiring, poisonous, greasy, tedious, and wildly satisfying. I loved making scrap steel sculpture and still would if I had a local scrapyard again. There’s no shortage of art made in this way, though most of it can be described as whimsical, cooky, trashy or downright plain ol’ derpy. I’ve always thought that my art was set apart from this. Don’t get me wrong- I love putting googly eyes on celebrities on checkout line magazine covers. My sixth sense? Humor. Conversely, I wanted my art to be regal, beautiful, raw, and evocative, which is way different than just walking out to the shop and zapping a few pieces of steel together to sell at your local farmer’s market. There’s nothing wrong with that, I just wanted something different.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned between being so broke I was sweating over paying twenty-five dollars for a load of trashy, rusty scrap steel to bang into svelte organic shapes to now, having my own shop and thousands of dollars of tools, it’s that you can not cork your creativity. Whatever you do, don’t ever tell that creativity to stop flowing. If you do that enough times, your sense of creativity will listen. It’ll cross its arms and hold its breath until it passes out, but it won’t wake up on its own. You’ll have to drag it out of the cobwebs and into the light and fresh air, give it a good bath and wait patiently for weeks, months, years for it to reanimate. If you’re a creative-type and can’t manifest an idea when you have it, let at least birth into the world. Talk about it. Jot it down at the bare minimum. The time will come and you’ll be ready to take action.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Well, if my friend were coming next week, I’d take them to the Loveland Sculpture in the Park festival, of course! It’s a great show, with lots of wonderful people and a warm, inviting vibe.

Any other week, my hypothetical friend and I would likely set off on bicycles to see the Fort Collins natural areas, then stop at a brewery or three (Odell, Funkwerks and Equinox are the local fav’s!). We’d probably get some reubens or falafel and take in a flick at the Lyric Cinema here in town. then take off to Denver for Meow Wolf.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Keith Martin deserves a Shoutout. I didn’t know Jack about Squat in regard to snow carving. After getting an invite to the CO State Snow Carving Competition a few years back, I gave it a solid college try. I watched a few videos and thought to myself that if my team and I were going to take a swing at this, we were doing it in style. The Lordz of Snowdor snow carving team was born. We showed up on scene with grandiose fur costumes and “weapons of snow destruction”, aka carving tools, that I made myself from horn, wood, fur, steel and various other accoutrements. The idea was that we were a Nordic glam-rock band that came to the US solely for this event. It was an absolute blast, even not knowing how anything was going to go. I ended up carving next to Keith and his team by luck of the draw. They made an exquisite, cheeky piece that was fun but built with technical resolve for the podium. Keith saw that I was not only having a great time while getting absolutely annihilated by the task at hand, but also gave the ordeal enough forethought to make costumes and tools from scratch. A friendship was forged out of the creativity and gluttony for punishment. We’ve been carving side by side at almost every snow event ever since, him teaching me all the ins and outs along the way. If you don’t believe me, check out www.snowandicecarving.com.

Website: www.molotovmetalworks.com

Instagram: @molotovmetalworks

Other: If you’d like more info on that upcoming sculpture, www.molotovmetalworks.com or www.onemoretimesculpture.com (WIP) are great places to start!