"Louie needs some paint, he’s getting too much sun."
Pete owns All Iron Works on Cole Street. He repairs and molds metal. The company’s main work is fences, but Pete creates works of art out of pieces of scrap metal.
"If there is more art, the world can be better and people will treat each other better," he told me on this sunny afternoon.
I walk by here all the time and have blogged (here and here) about his art in the past.
Today was the first time I met the maestro welder, who was applying a fresh coat of silver sun block on Louie. I asked the metal man’s name. Pete than showed me his workshop and office.
Inside were other examples of his work, ornamental patterns, stain glass frames, a butterfly trapped in a spider web across from an approaching arachnid, a phoenix taking flight. Imaginative, well executed work. All made with scrap metal, stuff that would be thrown away from buildings and other construciton sites. Scraps he finds, scraps left over from other jobs.
A long garage, wide garage houses the company. The front has become a local attraction of sorts, with metal bats and pumpkin headed man reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas. The man with the jack-o-lantern skull, he’s Eddie."Louie was getting lonely," says Pete, "so I made him a friend. First I made him the bats, then I made him Eddie."
"I believe that the more art there is the better world will be." 
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