(funky music) - I'm here in Troy, New York, about to step inside the studio of artist Tori Rodriguez.

Follow me.

- I'm a multimedia artist, primarily working in metal sculpture and also fine art painting.

(funky music) The first time I welded was in high school and completely fell in love with it, but didn't think that that's what I wanted to do like as a career.

As I started to get more into my art in my 20s, at the same time, I was working in manufacturing, doing like programming and design work for a company that does all precision cutting.

So I got a lot of exposure to different materials, steel, aluminum, stainless, some specialty alloys.

Initially went to school for interior design, took some time off of college for a few years, and then went back to school full-time for welding.

And that really pushed me to get more into metal sculpture.

I just really love steel, it's very versatile.

You can use steel for building large structures, for building smaller things.

There are different finishes that you can put on it, I love texture, I have like a whole thing about texture, so playing with the different finishes and patinas and treatments on steel, I find that to be a lot of fun.

(eerie music) The Mastodon in Cohoes, New York, that was my first large-scale piece that I did.

I worked with the Abram Lansing Elementary School, the principal of the school, and I sat on an art committee together, that's how we met, and then he had this idea to have me come in and talk to the students.

So I got sketches from a bunch of third graders of what they wanted this giant sculpture to look like.

Put them in a pile, see what the popular vote was, see what was buildable.

And that's how the sculpture kind of came to be.

I built a frame out of one-inch steel tubing and then the rest of it is entirely out of scrap.

I had no idea what I was getting into, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Have you seen the owl?

(triumphant music) The owl is at Okte Elementary and that's in Clifton Park.

The art teacher at Okte Elementary, her kids play soccer in the field where Mastodon is.

So she saw that and she was like, "I need a sculpture like this."

So I got linked up with her and she was like, "You know, could you build something like this for us?"

And I said, "I can, but my stipulation is that I get to come in and talk to your students about how cool welding is."

We're seeing such a shortage of welders in the industry right now that companies are just, they're hurting.

A lot of them are forced to move toward automation because they can't fill positions.

And there's just like not as many people coming into the industry as the people who are coming out of the industry, so in a world of social media influencers, how do you try to inspire the next generation to wanna do something to work with their hands, to do something that's really an essential skill?

I mean, welding is used in so many industries.

So that's part of why I go in to talk to students and work with them.

You know, the art part is very cool, but it really, you know, I have a dual purpose of being there and trying to inspire the next generation to still wanna stick with the trades.

(upbeat music) So I've done plenty of small-scale sculptures.

I like the idea of doing something that's functional but also artistic.

A couple years ago, I was walking through my house looking for some drinking glasses, I was having people over and I'm like, where did all my drinking glasses disappear to?

And they were scattered throughout my house holding plant clippings.

So I was like, okay, I'm a fabricator, I'm an artist, it's time to make something cool.

That's when I started making propagation stations.

I love the juxtaposition of like the heavy industrial, almost post-apocalyptic design of these, with the delicacy of the glass in the plant.

I also am finishing a new prototype design for a banana stand that goes in your kitchen that's in the shape of a scorpion.

(jazz music) The large scale project on deck is going to be a suspended sculpture coming out of a skylight in downtown Albany.

It's going to be in a restaurant, I can't tell you who it's for yet, but they have a very like Louisiana, New Orleans vibe.

And they asked me to build us out of old instruments to kind of bring that jazz feel into the space.

The instruments for this project were donated by Cole's Woodwind Shop up in Saratoga Springs.

They're older and a lot of them have been decommissioned.

My plan is to have a music case open on like the upper backside of the sculpture and then have it, like all of the instruments look like they're falling out of it, almost like a Mary Poppins kind of feel, like very whimsical.

The instruments that are gonna be like closer to the case, I wanna put a stronger patina on those to make them look older, and as they come into the space, kind of fade out that patina and, you know, polish them and make them look newer.

My brain just has so many ideas that I'll probably die before I just can physically get to all of them.

So I like to take on projects that are gonna push me to do something better and bigger.