Ask Me Anything. An Interview with Rebekah Frank

Discovering welding and training to be a blacksmith 

Olivia Shih: You’ve had a circuitous route to becoming an artist. Can you walk our readers through your career path, including your degree in math?
Rebekah Frank: Before I got the associate’s degree in math [from Laney College in Oakland, California], I was at a different community college taking ballet and welding as electives. The welding class really fascinated me. I was watching steel change state before my eyes. You turn it from a solid to a liquid, then you shape it, add things, and then when it cools, it’s solid again. I went to an academically focused high school where I learned conceptually from a book. With welding, it was physically happening in front of me, and I decided—at eighteen—I wanted to work with metal.


Olivia: What came next?
Rebekah: After I got my mathematics degree, I tried to find work as a welder and failed. As a young woman in 1995, it was impossible to get anybody interested in hiring me. But I kept on talking to people and worked odd jobs, including working as a barista, at a nonprofit call center, and for Laura X, a women’s rights activist. Eventually, someone told me to check out the California Blacksmith Association (CBA). 
I reached out, and CBA president Paul Boulay told me about welding technology classes at Austin Community College (ACC). So I moved to Texas and got my second associate’s degree, this time in welding technology with a focus on blacksmithing. 


Olivia: You made a decision to move just like that to further your welding career? That’s commitment.
Rebekah: Yeah, I didn’t have much holding me down, so I moved. And ACC was really amazing… I had to take drawing and sculpture classes on top of technical welding, which included metallurgy, welding inspection, and blacksmithing. It took me years to get my degree because I was taking classes on and off between work. 

Around that time, I worked for a copper sculptor named Daryl G. Colburn and a glass artist named Reji Thomas. I worked for Daryl for free for about a year, and Reji paid but didn’t offer consistent work. And I learned a lot from working for creative people. Daryl’s shop was filthy. He was a character, didn’t wear shoes, smoked constantly, and drank from sunup to sundown. It wasn’t a nice shop, but I was getting hands-on experience in making. I learned how copper moved, how to replicate forms, how to solder. We would go to recycling facilities, and Daryl would pick copper scrap and wire that caught his eye. Then we would strip plastic off the copper wire, and he would fuse the wire to create figurative sculptures.


Rebekah Frank forging at Penland School of Craft, 2017. Photo courtesy of the artist.



Becoming a blacksmith and welder

Rebekah: After I picked up blacksmithing and more welding skills, I started getting jobs pretty quickly. I met other people while working for Lars Stanley and learned about the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America (ABANA). So I became a member of Balcones Forge, the local affiliate of ABANA in the Hill Country where I lived. I went to member events, met people, and got more jobs through these connections.
The head of my college program, Warren Donworth arranged a Sister City Exchange Student and Internship Program for the welding students. And in 2000, five of us went on a two-month-long, fully paid trip in Koblenz, Germany. I was welding forty hours a week in a language I was anything but fluent in.



Relationship-building

Olivia: From what you’ve told me, it seems like you set a goal and then you work towards it. You’re intentionally building relationships wherever you go. 
Rebekah: Yeah, I didn’t just sit and wait to become a welder. Even when I was in California, I found Paul Boulay, and I asked for advice. He sat down with me over a cup of coffee and told me about Austin Community College. I listened, and I moved to Texas. 

Olivia: Do you have any advice on relationship-building?
Rebekah: This seems like a small thing, but be interested in other people. Show up to events like exhibitions, lectures, and conferences; talk to people, and ask questions. Showing up plays a big part in the art world. I’m an introvert, and my favorite thing to do is to make things by myself. So it can be really hard for me to show up, but I try to put effort into doing it. 

Olivia: Some of my students aren’t used to reaching out to or making connections with other folks. What kind of mindset helped you start showing up?
Rebekah: It can be scary to ask, but the worst thing is if somebody says no. But what if they say yes? Or what if they say, “Well, no, but ...” and direct you to something else?



Traveling and working abroad 

Olivia: What happened next during your time in Germany?
Rebekah: At the exchange student program in Koblenz, I rode my bicycle everywhere and ate mac and cheese (without the cheese) to save money. With the funds I saved from the program grant, I traveled for a full year. 
I apprenticed for Nobuya Yamaguchi, a Japanese blacksmith who lives in Israel. I met him at an ABANA conference in Flagstaff, Arizona, prior to traveling to Germany. You don’t get paid at European-style apprenticeships, but you get room and board. And at the end of the three-month apprenticeship, they typically give you money to travel to your next apprenticeship. In this case, Nobuya didn’t because I sold my first piece of art that I’d made in his shop. 


Olivia: You were open-minded to possibilities and spontaneous trips.
Rebekah: Yeah, I wasn’t on a defined career path. I turned twenty-four in Israel, then I did construction work in Marseille, France, for a month. After that, I traveled to the south of Spain and worked for a British blacksmith I had also met at an ABANA conference. 
While I was in Europe, I attended Hefaiston, a large blacksmithing conference at a castle in the Czech Republic, and participated in the blacksmithing conference and competition in Stia, Italy.



Making a living and keeping expenses low

Olivia: So you were a traveling blacksmith.
Rebekah: Exactly, and after I returned to central Texas, I worked for architectural blacksmiths like Roy Bellows in Fredericksburg, George Schroeder in San Antonio, Colby Brinkman in Bastrop, and Robert Abdallah in Austin. We were making gates and railings, mostly architectural ironwork, and the jobs were short-term. In between jobs, I did construction work, substitute teaching, and a very short stint as a server in a restaurant. For one job, I would stay in an unelectrified trailer on undeveloped land to limit commute time. There was no stove for cooking, no running water. It was a “dig a hole in the pine forest” thing if you needed to go. I was able to keep expenses low because of the way I chose to live. 



Rebekah Frank. From left: Shadow Vessel (sculptural object), 2019. Steel, stainless steel. Approx. 4½ x 4½ x 16 in. Photo: Cami Leski.
X-Box (container), 2022. Forged steel. 4½ x 4½ x 4½ in. Photo: Cami + Brady  @Loam.Marketing.
Potential Space (sculptural object), 2021. Steel, sterling silver. 2 x 2 x 3½ in. Photo by the artist.



Career pivot: Scientific instrument maker

Rebekah: Starting in 2005, it became harder to find work, and I had to drive farther and farther for jobs. At this point, I was twenty-eight and I wanted some comfort in my life. 
I had years of experience as a blacksmith, but I realized I didn’t want to open my own shop. Just because you have the skill doesn’t mean you have the desire or entrepreneurial brain to make it happen. So I went back to Balcones Forge and met Mary Jo Emrick. She held a welding job at a university research laboratory… and she needed someone who could weld aluminum to complete a time-sensitive job. I took the job. The University of Texas Applied Research Laboratory ended up hiring me as a full-time Scientific Instrument Maker. This was my first long-term job, and I decided to stay on for three years because they had an educational stipend.



Going back to school while working

Olivia: That’s an incredible job perk! What did you study?
Rebekah: Metalsmithing. I had accumulated so many skills in the past decade that I thought I might want to teach at a college level. My job at the University of Texas was a good job. It had insurance, benefits, all these things. We created prototypes, the engineers would test it, then come back with modification requests. So I learned how to read blueprints and how to work with engineers to make weird objects. We welded different metals, from titanium to aluminum. We made things, we fixed things. I converted a shipping container into a mobile water-tight laboratory.
But I didn’t love it. I didn’t want to stay there forever. 

Olivia: Let’s talk about your journey of acquiring metalsmithing degrees and becoming a professor. 
Rebekah: I started when I was thirty, earning my BFA and studying with Beverly Penn and Nicole Deschamps-Benke at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. I worked full-time for two of those years. I worked really long shifts so I could go to school for two days every week. Then I went to Cranbrook Academy of Art for my MFA. 

Olivia: With that kind of work and study schedule, it’s as if you were burning your life away.
Rebekah: I was. Now I know better, but not at that time. I had a fire lit under me, no money behind me. No financial support from my parents. Part of my drive came from the fact that I was often the only woman in welding spaces. Sometimes the first woman. I wanted to prove I could. 

Olivia: How did you make a living while at Cranbrook?
Rebekah: I had a little bit of scholarship money, work-study jobs, and student loans. One job was working at the Cranbrook library, checking out and shelving books. I also worked at the Cranbrook Art Museum when they were moving their entire collection into a state-of-the-art storage facility. And one year, I was Iris Eichenberg's departmental assistant. 
I still came out of grad school with a chunk of student loan debt, but I don’t regret it. I felt more confident in my creative style, and it played a big role in the formation of my personal and creative identity. It’s also when I started doing art administration jobs. 


Rebekah Frank. Death, Nostalgia, Decay (left to right), 2020. Mild steel, imitation gold leaf, 14k yellow gold–filled rings. Pendants: 13 x 8 x 1 cm (each), Chain: 38 cm length (each). Photo by the artist.



Career pivot: Arts administration

Olivia: Why did you decide to go into art administration instead of teaching? 
Rebekah: Through grad school, I realized I could be an artist and that I didn’t want to teach. At a 2010 conference at California College of the Arts (CCA), Iris introduced me to Susan Cummins, one of the founders of Art Jewelry Forum (AJF). And I started volunteering for AJF in 2011, doing research on schools with jewelry programs.
Starting in 2012, I was working for AJF part-time, uploading content to the website, designing the newsletter, and other things. I met Stefan Friedemann, owner of Ornamentum Gallery, at my graduate degree show in 2012. He began showing my work, so I made money from those sales. I also sold work at my degree show, and used those combined funds to move to San Francisco, where my siblings were living. 


Rebekah Frank. Encompassing Collar, 2025. Sunday Morning series. Steel. 21 x 5 x ⅛ in. Model: Natalia M. Roberts. Photo: Lydia Daniller.



Making it work in a big city

Olivia Shih: San Francisco is a notoriously expensive city to live in. How did you make it work?
Rebekah: I lived in unorthodox places throughout my life. For example, when I first moved out of my parents’ house as a teen, I lived in a FEMA trailer that was on a property that had been destroyed by an earthquake. I had met this punk show promoter, Nathan Peterson, who ran an ad hoc punk club called Cell 63, and it was his trailer. This was 1995, and punk bands were constantly coming and going. There was a cracked swimming pool that skaters used. It wasn’t typical, but it was inexpensive. Then, when I moved to Oakland, I stayed in a punk house with fourteen other women. I lived in the stairwell, where I had a foam pallet to sleep on and milk crates to hold my things. 
I didn’t sign a lease in my own name until I was thirty-eight. After moving to San Francisco, I stayed in my sister’s rent-controlled flat that she had lived in for ten years. It was an old Victorian, and I lived in a tiny, pantry-like room off the kitchen. I didn’t sign a lease in my own name until I was thirty-eight. 

My part-time position at AJF became twenty hours, then forty hours, then eventually eighty hours a week when I became executive director. That job sustained me for a while, but I needed a break in 2018. For the next four years, I focused on my art practice. From 2018 to mid-2022, I accomplished most of my professional writing, lectures, and residencies. I was very tired but proud of myself for getting that done.
I still worked very, very part-time—five hours a week for a private jewelry collector. I archived over nine hundred pieces of jewelry. Photographing jewelry, scanning receipts and invoices, collecting artist bios, entering everything into a database. It was nice to have something steady to cover the bare essentials while the majority of my income came from art-related opportunities.


Rebekah Frank. Necklace 11 (necklace), 2019. From the Just Add Flesh series. Steel, 14k gold. Photo: Lydia Daniller.



Career pivot: Program officer 

Olivia: How do you make a living now?
Rebekah: In addition to continuing to make and sell my work through galleries, I’m also a program officer at a family foundation. A family foundation is a nonprofit organization created by a family with a mission and a strategy for giving out funds through grants and/or awards. My role as a program officer is to research, design, and implement grant-making strategies on behalf of the foundation. Unsurprisingly, I specialize in the craft field and part of my job is to build and maintain a wide network with the craft community. I have in-depth conversations with thought leaders, administrators, and craftspeople to learn what they’re doing and what they need. 


Olivia: How did you find this job?
Rebekah: A former board member from Art Jewelry Forum, Sarah Turner, shared the program officer job posting with me. I had never seen a job description that seemed like it was written for me. It was a perfect fit. 


Olivia: Is this position full-time or part-time?
Rebekah: Although it’s technically full-time, I’m happiest when I’m making work. So I take a pay reduction to work fewer days. I try to protect two days a week for my studio practice. Sometimes taking this job feels like a bit of a loss for me, because I had built up momentum in my art career. But, I also feel that it’s important to give back to the community that I’ve been a part of since I was eighteen.


Rebekah Frank. Pacifica, Big Sur, Devil’s Slide, McWay Falls (necklaces), 2020. Pacific Coast Highway series. Steel, rubber, linen cord. Variable dimensions. Photo by the artist.



General Advice

Olivia: Any general advice for artists just starting out?
Rebekah: A lot of people want a guidebook on how to be an artist, but there isn’t one. Everybody does it differently. Some people build a myth around their artist career—they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, completely self-made. Often, the reality is that their spouse is paying for necessities, or they have inherited money. And that’s okay, but it’s important to show people how different artists truly make a living. I’m definitely not self-made. There were a lot of people who helped along the way, more people than this interview can hold.

There are so many ways to make a living as an artist: you can do the art fair circuit, teach workshops or in formal institutions, or even have a job completely unrelated to art. You just need to find what works for you.
 

About the Interviewee

Rebekah Frank is a studio artist and independent writer who enjoys traveling the world in search of interesting experiences to fuel both her art and writing practices.












 

About the author

Olivia Shih (she/her) is a jeweler, artist, and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born to Taiwanese immigrant parents in the USA, she grew up on the subtropical island and is interested in cultural nuances and family dynamics. In addition to running her jewelry studio, Olivia teaches at the California College of the Arts and works as the assistant editor at Metalsmith.

Instagram: @oliviashihdesigns