Artist creates what she calls 'welded drawings'

Marieken Cochius paints, sculpts, draws and works with felt. But around seven years ago, she donned a welder's mask and picked up a blowtorch.

Although her style keeps evolving, she began to work with flat sheets of steel and create what she calls "welded drawings."

Three of her wood sculptures are on display outside the Ligenza Moore Gallery in Philipstown and on Saturday (Aug. 16), she will open a solo exhibition, Axons, at the Garrison Art Center with a 5 p.m. reception. Her work is also showing at galleries in New York City; Clifton Springs, New York; and Lenox, Massachusetts. Soon, she'll be in Newburgh at the revivified New Holland Gallery.

Asked about her Dutch heritage, she replies "born and raised" and cracks a deep smile. "But I always wanted to leave after high school."

She came to the U.S. as an au pair and settled in Brooklyn, working as an assistant to Eddie Adams, who snapped the iconic photo of a street execution in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Now she lives in Wappingers Falls; the village commissioned a wood sculpture for its Boathouse community center.

Cochius is a professional organizer and back then, "my clients went to the Hamptons every summer, so I sublet my apartment and traveled all over the country in a 1982 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. It was like driving a couch."

She learned to weld 25 years ago while working in a prop shop that made Christmas decorations for department stores, including moving metal arms. "I couldn't believe I got paid to do that," she says.

After a hiatus with the torch, she experimented by building reliefs on a piece of sheet metal and turning the results into something unrecognizable by playing with the voltage and wire speed of the welding apparatus to make the metal warp and bend on its own.

Sometimes she pokes holes through the surface and uses a Dremel to hash out the details. Peering at one of her creations, she compares a mass of material to a stack of dimes: "It's like blowing bubbles."

Despite the industrial origin and process, her work resembles organic matter: roots, leaves, tree bark, blood vessels and the floor of a forest with mushrooms popping up in "Triptych of the Universe," which will be displayed at Garrison.

Nothing is wasted and sometimes Cochius cuts away pieces to reuse. The process is meticulous, as one might expect from a professional organizer as reflected in her tidy open-air welding station and immaculate studio.

Lately, she's incorporating the detritus of the process into her work, including the byproduct slag and the burnt wire emitted by the welding machine, which she melts on top of the metallic sheet, "playing and drawing with it." Table sculptures featuring wire (also at Garrison) look like they're wrapped in lace or cobwebs.

A couple of years ago, Cochius began finishing pieces with a blowtorch, which adds a patina akin to oil in a puddle: the colors change depending on the light and the viewer's angle. And she started working with sheets of rusted zinc taken from the roof of a dark green barn that houses her woodshop.

The metallic abstracts unfold as she works. "I have no idea what I'm going to do until I get started at 9 a.m. every day," she says. "I don't wait for inspiration, I just work things out as I go, asking questions like, 'I wonder what would happen if I did this?' "

Showing off her blowtorch, Cochius flashes another smile and says, "This is so much fun."

The Garrison Art Center, at 23 Garrison's Landing, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. except Monday. Axons and a show by Bill Schuck, Remnants and Schemes, continue through Sept. 14. Cochius will speak about her work at 2 p.m. on Aug. 23.