The man behind the metal

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

The vibrant public art scene of downtown Ithaca recently found itself growing with 12 new functional art pieces that double as bike racks. A sun and clouds outside of Bool’s Flower Shop, a fish outside of Luna’s Street Food, and an outline of New York State by the Dewitt Mall are just some of the new, colorful displays.

The racks were designed by area residents and submitted to the City of Ithaca. Around 80 submissions were eventually whittled down to 12 and with the help of Bike Walk Tompkins the city came up with a few high-traffic areas to put them. But before they could be installed they needed to be pushed from vision to reality and Durand Van Doren was the man to do it. A local blacksmith and artist, Van Doren and his helper Teo Aceto brought the ideas to life in Durand’s Forge in Mecklenburg.

“I liked shop in high school and I imagined myself a woodsman with all the skills, that was really appealing to go after and try and learn that,” Van Doren said of his entry into blacksmithing.

Van Doren, a resident of Trumansburg, rents his forge in Mecklenburg, which is strewn with dozens of his past projects and art work. A giant sunflower throne, several sizable pie racks, a bench made of horseshoes, and a queen-sized bed frame are just a few of the creations he still has.

After moving to a little town in upstate New York Van Doren started working in a blacksmith shop in what he calls a commune of hippies.

“People in the commune were supposed to work in the blacksmith shop instead of freeloading,” Van Doren said. “You had to do some work. We were coming around to that in the commune. And people decided that they didn’t want to work in the blacksmith shop anymore, tedious. So, they had to hire somebody on the outside.”

He had just moved to town when he was offered the job. He found the work to be right up his alley.

“I like to make things, I like to craft things, so here’s a new set of skills and I was a good worker,” Van Doren said.

The commune sent him to the second ever Blacksmith’s convention, held in Georgia. This is where Van Doren heard about the Turley Forge Blacksmithing School in Santa Fe. After taking the next fall course at Turley’s, Van Doren immediately opened his own forge. He’s been working as a blacksmith ever since and has picked up a bit of a following.

“The first couple of years I didn’t really make very much money,” Van Doren said. “Some of the customers are still around. The other day someone came back. I made him a little candle holder for the table, maybe it’s a small candelabra, as a wedding present I think it was 35 years ago. They came back to buy another one for their daughter.”

The city of Ithaca approached Van Doren after the company it had originally planned to work with to produce the bike racks was too expensive.

“We actually, initially, thought we were going to partner with a national bike rack manufacturer,” said Tom Knipe, currently City of Ithaca Deputy Director for Economic Development. “But, by some luck actually, that manufacturer, their turn-around time was quite long and we found that they were a little bit difficult to work with so we came back to the drawing board and said ‘We should see if it would work to work with a local manufacturer.’ Because that was really something we were hoping for from the beginning.”

 

This is not Van Doren’s first time working with the City of Ithaca. Over the years he has built up a solid reputation with the municipality. It’s because of this relationship that he became the City’s go-to local manufacturer for the bike racks.

“It ended up being a great partnership,” Knipe said. “He’s fantastic to work with.”

The idea for the bike racks was Knipe’s, several years ago. It wasn’t until fairly recently that the funding was found to pursue the project through a local donor Knipe said would prefer to stay anonymous. Knipe initiated the project when he was the Tourism Director for Tompkins County and involved with public art, as well as a volunteer with BikeWalk Tompkins.

“I was aware of the need for bike racks and thought this was a neat idea to sort of combine the idea of adding some color and interest to the downtown, while also filling a need for bike racks,” Knipe said of the projects beginnings.

Although Van Doren has worked with the city before, this is his first big, artistic project with Ithaca. The designs he was given were fairly basic. It was Van Doren and several helpers who chose the materials and decided how best to create them to be durable and usable. It took them six weeks to fabricate all 12 designs.

“We just did our best to make what was on the paper and try and choose materials that would be way sturdy, for years of fighting against vandalism and accidents,” Van Doren said. “So, try to make a really, really sturdy appliance for the budget.”

After Van Doren and his helpers created all of the bike racks they were sent to the Hubbell Galvanizing Company in Yorkville to be galvanized using a special powder coating process, which is highly durable.

“The very best,” Van Doren said, “that’s what they got. The best I can make, absolutely.”

The timing for the new bike racks happened to coincide with National Bike Month, and the introduction of LimeBikes to downtown Ithaca. Next month on June 8 the city will celebrate the winning designs at the Community School of Music and Arts. Members of the public are invited to view the designs at the CSMA and vote for their favorite anytime before the June 8 ceremony.

While the city originally found 16 places they wanted to place the new bike racks the budget could only afford 12. But, there may still be hope for those last four spots. Knipe said he would like to see them filled in the future, and maybe add more bike racks beyond the downtown area, but more funding would have to be found. It’s possible that Van Doren and the City of Ithaca may not yet be finished creating functional public art to celebrate bike culture in Ithaca.

“I’m happy to work for the city,” Van Doren said. “I love to make work outside in the public. People like it or enjoy my creativity or my fabricating skills. I try to be just a good workman and do a good job and make stuff that’s going to last.”

Van Doren’s work can be found all over the area, and beyond. He is in the finishing stages of several benches for Cornell University that were specially designed to highlight several of the agriculture departments, he is in the process of creating a commissioned weather vane, while the hinges he created for a private tea house door might soon be sent off to its owner. Van Doren’s work runs the gamut from functional to artistic, to functionally artistic. But all are created with a particular brand of a former hippie commune blacksmith and artist from New Jersey.