For Ybarra, the process is as pleasing as the product.
“I like the idea of taking something that’s discarded and giving it new life,” says Ybarra as he runs his finger along the edge of a rose petal in one of his arrangements. “It’s a very organic process. ... Look at the crumples and folds in these petals: Doesn’t that just remind you of the beauty of nature?”
A professional metal sculptor, Ybarra has created something of a niche in the art marketplace for his bouquets of recycled-steel and found-object flowers. He just completed a large bouquet on commission from a patron in Florida.
“They wanted something for their home in Florida that would remind them of the west, so I thought of a cowboy boot and a botanical of flowers growing from the boot, with horseshoes as blossoms and an old gear as the spur on the boot,” says Ybarra. “It turned out great; but now it’s kind of on hold until we can figure out how to get it down there to them.”
Freight costs and the risk of damage that come with transporting works of art over long distances have always been a headache for local metal sculptors - who, like many other Montana-based artists, largely depend on out-of-state buyers to support their work. Metal, after all, is inherently heavy; and gas isn’t getting any cheaper.
But to hear Ybarra tell it, local artists working in metals have recently run into a challenge that could make the price of shipping all but a moot point. He worries that some metal artists simply won’t be able to continue working in Missoula if a resolution to this new problem isn’t reached, and soon.
“The economic state of the arts here in Missoula will really be affected in a major way for all of us if we can’t figure something out,” says Ybarra.
“It is a really big deal to artists like myself.”
“It” is a seemingly obscure change in policy at Pacific Steel Company, the metal recycling facility located on Palmer Street in Missoula. The company, which has been a fixture of the Missoula economy for six decades, has long allowed enterprising locals to sift through its heap of cast-off metal scrap in search of treasures. Anyone could buy anything from the heap at a standard, per-pound price. What wasn’t resold locally was eventually shipped off in train cars, to be melted down and remanufactured at steel mills around the country.
“I guess we probably had 20, 25 people who came in on a regular basis to check out the yard,” says Mike Wolf, assistant manager at Pacific Steel. “We had hobbyists, people looking for good deals on stuff, people getting stuff to resell. I don’t know what they did with all the stuff they bought.”
Ybarra was one of Pacific’s most regular scavengers: He figures he visited the scrap yard an average of two or three times a week over the past decade n that is, until one day about three weeks ago.
“I showed up one day and they told me they weren’t allowing individual people into the yard anymore,” recalls Ybarra. “I was pretty shocked; it was definitely a surprise.”
Turns out, officials at Pacific Steel had decided to stop allowing nonemployees into the scrap yard. Mostly, the decision was based on growing concerns over the possibility that a customer might be injured by unstable piles of material or heavy machinery in the recycling yard.
“We have four excavators working out there, big piles of scrap, and there’s simply no room to have people milling around,” explains Wolf. “It’s a safety issue. If we kill a customer, it’s bad, obviously.”
But if Ybarra and other scrap-yard treasure hunters want someone to blame for the change in policy, they would do well to look much farther afield - across the Pacific Ocean, in fact.
That’s because, at a deeper level, the problem traces to transformations in the international market for steel, which has expanded vastly in recent years due to economic growth in China and other parts of Asia. Increased demand for steel products has led to higher prices paid by companies like Pacific Steel for scrap metal; those higher prices, in turn, have encouraged more local people and companies to go to the effort of hauling their scrap metal to Pacific.
“We have a greatly increased volume this year, about 30 percent over past years,” says Wolf. “As a result, we’ve had to move the scrap pile to a different spot in the yard, and we have more equipment working than ever. So the chance of some kind of accident is greater.”
That concern isn’t taken lightly by local artists. Indeed, most agree that something needed to be done at the scrap yard to avoid just such accidents.
“The boss down there has been very nice and has talked with us about the problem,” says Danny Krause, a metal sculptor who creates his large, abstract works at his home in Arlee and sells them all over the northwestern United States.
“With insurances and lawsuits the way they are, they obviously can’t afford to have someone hurt,” Krauss continues. “We understand that. But I buy hundreds of pounds of steel a month out there to incorporate into my pieces - which are getting larger and larger n and with the price of steel now, it would cost half a fortune to buy it new.”
Krauss sketches out the basic economics: The last time he bought scrap steel at Pacific Steel, he paid 25 cents per pound for it. Steel of the same quality and thickness, purchased new, would cost a dollar a pound or more. Considering that one of his finished works will weigh upwards of 300 pounds, the difference in the cost of materials adds up quickly.
And for every $100 that an artist is forced to tack onto the price of a finished work of art, most galleries will tack on another $100 or more in commission fees n effectively doubling every increase in the cost of materials.
Of course, local artists could go to scrap yards in other cities to buy their scrap steel. But then, they run right back into the cost of gasoline.
“To take my 3/4-ton truck, at 12 miles to the gallon, up to Kalispell or someplace like that - that adds up too quick now,” says Krauss. “You might as well buy new steel in Missoula.”
Few local artists have watched the evolution of the local market for scrap steel as closely, or for as long a time, as Steve Connell. A former University of Montana art professor, Connell was the man who introduced Ybarra and a whole generation of UM sculpture students to the Pacific Steel scrap pile.
Not surprisingly, he is as concerned as anybody about the impact of the policy change at Pacific Steel on his former students and other area artists working in metals.
“There’s bound to be some artists and consumers that’ll simply be priced out of the market by this change,” says Connell. “As the cost of the materials go up, of course you’ll need to see the price of the finished artwork go up; and unfortunately, that will impact all of the galleries and people who are looking to buy this kind of art.”
So what’s to be done? Nothing, for now.
Pacific Steel’s Wolf says that, for the foreseeable future, the change in policy is permanent - “at least through the summer, while we’re busy.”
But Ybarra hopes that if enough artists and other scrap-seekers contact Pacific Steel about the issue, perhaps some kind of arrangement can be made - not just for the sake of local artists, but also for the sake of the planet.
“The scrap at Pacific (Steel) is a precious gem to many artists,” says Ybarra. “I can give new life to something discarded, make something beautiful out of it, keep it from having to be shipped away and melted down. That’s important, I feel like.”
In the meantime, he must make do with his dwindling supply of materials, hope for the best n and try to get some sleep.
“I literally have had bad dreams about the things that I’m missing out there in that scrap pile while it’s been closed to us,” says Ybarra with a rueful chuckle. “Once that stuff goes onto the train and gets shipped off to be melted, it’s gone.
“It’s just depressing to think about it.”
Reporter Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com.
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