Nails Welded and Shaped Into Incredible Sculptures

John Bisbee’s calling came unexpectedly enough when he accidentally knocked over a rusted bucket of nails and saw that instead of spilling over, the nails held the shape of the bucket. Fast forward almost three decades later and the New England artist and Bowdoin College teacher has since been welding and forging 12 inch nails into heavy, monumental installations. Using a MIG wire-feed welder and perpetually donning a welding hood, he sometimes spends hundreds of hours in his studio to create sculptures that can comprise tens and thousands of metal spikes to create. His sculptures vary in shapes from the abstract and the geometric to more recognizable ones such as the blossoms in his most recent collection New Blooms but according to him, one thing remains unchanged: “Only nails, always different.”

For another form of nail art, try Pointed Portraits Formed by Nails by Artist David Foster.