September 29, 2022
I am currently exploring how to make vintage garment metal sculptures using textile fabrication techniques.
Biography
I am AJ TIvol, Owner and Artist of Acme Twisted Metal Art. I have been in business since 2011 but have struggled to really get online with my business. After many failed attempts, I decided I needed to do something different.
In 2021 I joined Product Launch Formula and have been much more focused in my efforts to get my business online. While I’m still working to get online, I have no doubt that PLF has gotten me from “I *should* do that thing” to “I *did* the thing.” Motivation is a challenge for me and the coaching calls, video tutorials, case studies, and the online PLF community have made all the difference in where I am today.
But before that I studied television and theater production in high school and college. After a decade and a half of working in local theater and television, I realized that I wasn’t doing the work that inspired me. I went back to college and earned an Associate of Arts in Applied Art and Design with an emphasis in Multimedia.
The AA and my work in television production lead to teaching nonlinear video editing for a few semesters. Teaching at the college level for the first time was challenging and incredible but, sadly, it was a temporary opportunity.
While teaching had been fun, it still wasn’t something I wanted to pursue full-time and so I took more art-related classes. I stumbled into an art course in the welding department and discovered that my art medium was metal!
While touring the department during one of the classes, I met my first CNC plasma table. This was the perfect intersection between computer art and metal art. And that began a journey of more than a decade of learning how to use CNC plasma tables, developing a college course for designing patterns and operating the machines, teaching the course for several years, and finally buying a table for the home shop.
And then the pandemic.
The course I had been teaching was not sustainable as an online course because of the lab portion — critical to learning how to operate the machines. I also discovered that I wasn’t creating my art because I was so focused on doing the best job I could to teach others how to do art.
It was time for me to step out of the shadows and revisit an idea I’d had for cutting vintage garment patterns out of sheet metal and using sewing techniques to construct small-scale sculptures.
And that’s where this website begins. I have other ideas and I will post updates at the top of this page as I pursue those other projects.