Born in Gloucester and raised in Rockport, metalwork sculptor Chris Williams’ trajectory as an artist is practically magical. “I had an outdoor life. I used to spend a lot of time with the quarries and in the woods behind our home.… To be a young kid, out in the middle of the woods, making treehouses and everything you can imagine out there. It was great to have that experience.”
Adding to the sensory experience as an impressionable child, Williams re- calls another impactful memory. “In Rockport, we had the sound of the tool company in the background and I just remember being in the back of my mom’s car driving by that Tool Company and they’d have all the doors open in the summertime and you could see they had this tremendous forging hammer and, if you timed it right, you could see all the sparks shooting off to the sides when the hammer came down. That was always a big mystery. What was going on in that building? It’s funny because I do some of that work now myself today, and at the time, I didn’t know what it was, but it was right under my nose in the beginning. It’s pretty cool.”
At twenty, Williams found himself working in his father’s machine shop. “At the time, we were working on dental hand pieces, dental turbines and we were making small parts to go into those drills. They were super small. It required a lot of measuring tools and patience. It was an early experience of being in a metal shop, where everything was very careful and challenging.… I really didn’t get a chance to have any fun in there until a bit later on but that was my first experience with metalworking.”
A few years later, Williams befriended a visual artist and began to understand the connection between freedom of expression and artistic joy. “It was an eye opener for me to go from measuring things in the 1000ths of the inch and being very careful about everything to seeing somebody who’s just kind of a free spirit.” And it occurred at a critical juncture in his life. “I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stay working with my father.
I was trying to figure out who I was as a young adult. [My artist friend] was having so much fun…so I started to make a lot of small gifts for people for the holidays…all this creativity started to come out of me but still it didn’t happen in the shop. It was just at home, working with clay and working in my lab with tools.”
Yet the spark was lit. “I was at work and I saw a welder we had never used be- fore. It was super old and under a bench, covered with other stuff. I pulled it out and started to fool around with it. I made a little dinosaur and a little dog that you could hold in your hand. They were made out of railroad spikes and scrap metal. I thought well, now the work thing has this possibility of a little fun! At the end of each day after work, I would spend a little more time and keep exploring the possibilities of putting things together and maybe two or three months after that people were saying, ‘This stuff is great. You’ve got to do something with it.’ So, I joined the Local Colors Gallery in Gloucester and that was a really great experience.”
That moment of self-awareness, where the path opens up before you and you find your purpose, is something we all seek—and not something everyone finds. Williams’ story is a lesson in fol- lowing one’s intuition and being willing to take risks. And to recognize the first signs of artistic freedom.
“I think the moment happened when I finally put down the micrometer and just started to eyeball things and have fun. It was just such a breath of fresh air. I already had all this experience in the shop so things started to happen really fast. I knew how to use tools to get something done so that was an aha moment right then.… It’s just funny how things work out. A friend of mine came to my dad’s shop. I was in the back welding and he said, ‘This is great, but you can’t happen here.’ I said, “What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You’ve got to be on your own. You gotta go do your thing.’ And somehow the Universe was telling me that, too. Time to go.” And then the sales started happening.
“I made a guy riding on a unicycle, it was probably about three, four feet tall. And within two days, [Local Col- ors] called me all excited that somebody just bought that unicycle. Oh my God, I couldn’t believe it. I’d never tried to make money with it and it immediately happened.”
“By the end of the first month in Manchester, I had two years- worth of commissions.…That was another eye opener. I don’t need galleries. I need airports.”
Williams caught fire and soon found gallery representation in New York and Arizona. His work went big. Really big. And while galleries offered great marketing and PR, it wasn’t until the New England Sculptors Society approached Williams and said that they were setting up a temporary show at the Manchester New Hampshire Airport and would he like to join, that the sky broke open. “I shipped three pieces back to Massachusetts and brought them to New Hampshire: a life-sized moose, buffalo and a huge giraffe. Within a week I got a call from the curator saying fifteen people had inquired about them and wanted to know more. So now I’m getting calls from people saying I really love this moose. Have you ever done an elk? I was able to have that dialogue with people and I started to get work. By the end of the first month in Manchester, I had two years-worth of commissions.… That was another eye opener. I don’t need galleries. I need airports.”
Fast forward to life today, Williams works and resides in Essex and is as content as ever, drawing daily inspiration from the region he grew up in. “There’s a different kind of beauty on Cape Ann. The way the ocean is interacting with the coastline and the buzz of the fishing ships coming and going.… I went fishing out on Eastern Point on the breakwater and I just couldn’t help but notice the way the swells of the water were rolling up the side of the breakwater. It wasn’t just crashing into it. It was just gliding along the side of it, and I find my- self picking up on stuff like that all the time.… The light over the marshes in Essex in the morning is fantastic. It’s such a warm, colorful thing to see when you wake up. And over on Wheelers Point in Gloucester where you can see the river and the marsh behind it—so magical over there. It’s perfect that I’m a sculptor because I see shapes and textures.… I think about the way the water comes and filters in between all the big rocks on that breakwater. That gets me thinking about how the glass moves around inside of the metal frames that we’re doing and how those materials interact with each other.… The world is beautiful, no doubt at all. But here, there’s an optimism that’s contagious. People are not only supportive of each other, they’re supportive of the concept of having this beau- tiful place preserved. There are many different kinds of people in this community…with no real divide among them. People are very accepting of each other, no matter where they’ve come from. No one ever feels above or below somebody else. And it helps to preserve this place for future generations.” As well as the future generations of artists. Williams’ oldest son recently completed three sculptures for a brewery in Michigan, and represents the fourth generation of Williamses working with metal tools. “It would be awesome if he keeps it going,” shares the proud father.
