Today we’d like to introduce you to Simon and Autumn Saleh.
Hi Simon and Autumn, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
We are Autumn and Simon Saleh the artists and founders of Wanderlust Ironworks. We are a husband and wife artist duo that got our start after college in our garage. We bought the small bare-bones setup for a micro-welding studio in one half of our two-car garage. We began to sell small items online and get requests for custom size furniture pieces and tables.
This grew us enough to get a little larger space for the studio because we were running out quickly! We started getting larger jobs that paid more but welding dumpsters and pool gates at apartments were not the fun creative sculptural job we were shooting for. While we were thrilled to pay the bills at the end of the month we decided to lean hard into custom modern ironwork and luxury furniture pieces custom built to order and hand-delivered. We cover the past couple of years have shifted away from some of the regular furniture items and finally into sculpture fine art and large handmade custom light fixtures.
Our studio at this point has become a public art and sculpture fabrication hub. We build and install many sculptures for public artists around the country and state and collaborate and build and install the majority of art pieces around San Antonio you might see out in about at a park or downtown. When we aren’t making sculptures for public art projects we are working on our own art pieces always working to further our skills and expand our interests keeping us open and fresh to new perspectives and creative ideas.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
We have had to learn everything we can about the construction industry and how it operates. As artists, our training and experience were mostly about content and meaning, and aesthetics. We did not think much about real-world physical problems and processes, just the fun fluffy stuff as they say.
We now have a healthy working knowledge of most large tractors, lifts, and cranes and how to use them safely. We have also had to devote part of our brain to the way an engineer would think. We now know tensile strengths and alloy compatibility requirements. Anti Corrosion and all the chemistry that goes into patina work and detailed restoration of things like bronze statues and sculptures.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We specialize in building steel sculptural pieces and custom artistic contemporary lighting and luxury furniture pieces. We can design, build and install sculptures and works of art. We offer design and turnkey fabrication of public art pieces for other artists and hospitality companies for hotels and such and have become a versatile art source.
We often get with a client that is commissioning a sculpture for their home or business and collaborate with them to get a feel of what they want from the space and the goals have set out for, what they love visually as far as surface, color, and scale and pair that with super high-quality materials and craftsmanship. We also sell available works out of our gallery in the front of the metal art studio.
We work with wood, cast plastics, glass, iron, steel, stainless, copper, brass, and many other materials to create one-of-a-kind works at the highest level of quality. We also specialize in bronze statue and sculpture repair, and full strip down and re patina work.
What sets us apart is that we are a small personable studio that will go to the ends of the earth to get you exactly what you want and create lasting relationships with our clients and get to hear the interesting stories they often share about their lives as they visit our studio.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Important to us is to do the very best we can on anything we are working on. We choose not to save money by cutting corners or using subpar quality materials. We always want to be a positive fun experience for our clients that culminates with a delivery or install.
Pricing:
- Large handbuilt mortise and tenon dining tables made from hardwoods start at $5000 for 8 ft. long with a custom steel base.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.wanderlustironworks.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wanderlust_ironworks/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wanderlustironworks
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/wanderlustiron
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/wanderlust-ironworks-san-antonio
