Interview 17: Sarah, a Fabricator and Instructor
Sarah is a fabricator, welder, and an instructor with Women Who Weld in Detroit, MI
Arclight is a long-form interview series in which Women Who Weld, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that teaches women how to weld and find employment in the welding industry, showcases women who create, ideate, and collaborate across specializations and trades.
Sarah Cavalieri completed Women Who Weld’s Intensive Welding Training Program in October 2018. She is a fabricator, welder, and a co-instructor with Women Who Weld in Detroit, MI. Below is an edited and condensed interview between Samantha Farrugia, the founder of Women Who Weld, and Sarah, a former Women Who Weld participant, in August 2023.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and then I moved to Asheville and lived there about 15 years.
Why did you move to Detroit?
I had visited Detroit a few times in my 20s, because I had a friend who lived here. While I was in Asheville, I was getting priced out because it had a boom and became a huge tourist town. So my friend who lives up here told my partner and I about a house across the street from his house that had been abandoned for a long time, like 8 or 10 years, and was going up on the tax auction. We decided to take a chance because it was so cheap and we ended up winning the auction, so we moved up here and started renovating our house. It’s been about nine years since that happened.
Did you live in the house during the renovation?
For the first month, we stayed across the street at our friend's house. And once we got one room fixed up, we moved in and just kind of worked outward from that one room. It was the middle of winter when we moved, so that added a couple of interesting scenarios and things to work through, but we made it.
How long did the major part of the renovation take?
I think we got it pretty comfortable within a year, granted comfortable for us is maybe a lower bar than for a lot of other people. But we were able to stay warm and pretty cozy in the little space we made. Within a couple of years, we replaced the roof so now we have a nice metal roof. And we take on projects when we are able to afford it. We replaced all the windows in the house during the first part of the pandemic, which was a huge step. And shortly after that we refinished the floors downstairs. So it's slowly becoming really nice. For now, all the major renovations are done, so it's just little aesthetic things that are left.
Did you and your partner do most of the work yourselves?
Yes, definitely. We hired a friend to help us with the roof, but that's about it. We've done everything else ourselves.
I imagine you’ve learned a lot in the process?
Yes, and luckily my partner Jason is a very talented carpenter. But we had to learn a lot about plumbing and electricity and we are both really thankful for YouTube.
What was the condition of the home when you purchased it?
It was structurally sound and the foundation was fine, but it was missing most of the windows and it was stripped of all the wires in the house, so we had to do all of the plumbing and electricity. And it was full of garbage. I think at some point people weren't living here but were storing animals here, so the downstairs was full of cat litter boxes that we had to clean out and I think they kept a bunch of dogs upstairs, so we were doing a lot of cleaning for the first month. We had to rent a dumpster to haul the trash away before we could actually start fixing the house. This was in 2015.
That reminds me, the streetlights were back on in 2015. In 2013, when Detroit officially declared bankruptcy, there were very few working streetlights as metal scrappers were actively tearing the city apart – scrapping anything that contained metal: structures, pipes, streetlights, etc. And some did so by burning a structure down, cutting it apart, and scrapping during the day or night. There were so many fires at the time. People were burning places down just to get to the metal, knowing that almost everything but copper and steel would melt in the fire.
I heard about that time when it was a lot worse than it is now.
Do you think you will stay in Detroit since you’ve put so much time and effort and love into your home?
I think the fact that we put so much love into our house is keeping me here, because I always do kind of fantasize about living somewhere else. I just don’t really know where that somewhere else is. It’s a grass is always greener scenario. But I really do love the city of Detroit. It’s got so much art and the people are really nice and I think it’s a really cool city. It’s mostly just the winters that really get to me. I’m from the South so it’s especially hard.
Do you think you will ever move back to North Carolina or the South?
Appalachia has my heart for sure. I do fantasize about living in the mountains beside a little creek. If I could do that I would be pretty happy.
Where did you work before becoming a welder?
Before I was a welder, I was in the food service industry, serving or bartending, for most of my adult life. And up until about a year before I started welding, I was working for a friend who ran an estate sale company in Detroit.
What was it about welding that interested you?
I had tried welding before through a friend who was a welder, but that was just a one-off thing and I didn't really think too much about it career-wise until I heard about Women Who Weld.
Did you have an interest in carpentry?
Yeah, definitely. It's something I've considered, but felt a little daunted by learning a new skill. It takes years and years to get really good at it. I didn't really know how to just start doing it, basically.
Perhaps if we were ‘Women Who Woodwork’ you would have taken that path.
Exactly!
You participated in Women Who Weld’s intensive welding training program in 2018. What types of jobs have you had as a welder?
My first job directly after finishing Women Who Weld – it was like a week after I completed the program – was at Airtec, which is a fabrication warehouse and involved a mix of production welding and custom fabrication. We did a variety of projects ranging from welding a bunch of little parts together (you're not even aware of what the bigger part is that these parts go to because there are so many identical pieces that you're welding all day) to making metal doors and a bunch of railings, all the way to making giant display cases for Google conventions.
But when I was starting out and still learning, I was put to work just grinding because you have to be familiar with the grinder if you're a fabricator. I was just grinding, grinding, grinding, and it was pretty miserable for a while at the beginning until they said, “Okay, now that you have that down, you can move on to a little more fabrication work.” So then I was grinding and MIG welding because that's what I was trained in. And once they saw I was confident in that, they said, “Okay, now we'll show you these different machines that are involved in the fabrication process.” So I learned how to operate the saw, the press brake, the drill press; and after I gained those skills and was feeling good on those machines, they said, “Okay, now we're going to teach you how to TIG weld.” So I learned how to TIG weld at my first job and that was really fun.
Then I wanted to scale down who I was working for. I wanted to try a smaller shop, which is something I wanted to do from the beginning, but I knew I first needed to learn a lot more, so I essentially treated my first job like a paid education. After I left that job, I started working for a couple of smaller shops in town. One company is a friend of a friend's metal shop and we did a lot of big railing projects. I also worked for another small shop and we also did a bunch of railing projects, like a set of 10 identical or almost identical railings for apartment buildings, or several for small businesses in town.
Railings and staircases are the bulk of what I’ve made in small shops, those are the moneymakers. But I’ve also made furniture; built record shelves for a local record store; helped with a sculpture for Sidewalk Fest; and remodeled shipping containers: cutting them apart, welding structural framing and opening them up to be placed in this outdoor Shakespeare Theater, which is an ongoing project. I’ve also worked on a heavy-duty project at a venue in Detroit called Spotlite. There had been a fire in the building, so we were hired to do structural reinforcement. We installed giant columns and put giant I-beams up in the ceiling on top of the columns. That involved a lot of blueprints and welding symbols – a lot of the things I had learned through Women Who Weld, so I was thankful for that!
We also worked on a project in Minneapolis, it wasn’t really welding related; we did more carpentry and assembly for a convention there. And, on a different project, the same crew I worked with in the welding shop was hired to fabricate a life-size replica of a Jeep out of foam and wood - so no welding, but it was a fabrication job. It was for the new electric Jeep debuting at an electric vehicle convention in Las Vegas; they made a short film where the Jeep replica is covered in a tarp and drops from a crane high up in the air and lands. It was supposed to simulate getting dropped out of a World War II plane.
So even though welding wasn’t involved in some of these projects, understanding fabrication and knowing how to measure and read blueprints is transferrable across different materials.
Absolutely, yeah, definitely. Joining things together, measuring, cutting (measuring twice, cutting once), goes across the different planes. I wouldn’t have been hired for these general fabrication jobs if it wasn’t for my experience and connections in the welding industry.
What’s been your favorite project to work on?
Making things for my house. Making furniture and collaborating with my partner Jason and combining wood and metal, that’s my favorite. We have made some really nice tables and wall hanging shelves. And that's what I really love about welding.
You’ve worked on many interesting projects, but perhaps the largest and most well-known is the Anish Kapoor sculpture in New York City. For those who don’t know, Anish Kapoor is the artist behind the famous sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park, Cloud Gate, or as most people refer to it: The Bean. Can you tell me about your experience and what it was like to work on such a monumental project?
The crew I worked with was really small: it was me, the owner of the company, and one other welder at the time. And the owner’s mentor was working on 56 Leonard in TriBeCa and they needed a really big push to get a bunch of work done, so they hired our crew to come and work on it for two weeks. I was really nervous at first because I didn't really know what I was getting into, but then I realized that the guys I was going with also didn't really know what they were getting into, so that made me feel a little better. On day one we found out we were going to be welding dual-shielded stainless steel, which I had not done before, and I didn't totally understand what that meant. But then they explained it and showed us what it was: flux-cored welding with stainless steel, but also using a shielding gas for extra protection around the weld. After you weld with flux-cored filler wire, you’re left with flux on top of the weld, like a layer of burnt toast, that you then chip off to reveal a nice shiny weld underneath.
So, we showed up on the first day, practiced on scrap a few times, and then we got to work. The sculpture was about halfway done when we arrived and plywood was covering the sculpture. We were working on the inside of the sculpture and it was the middle of summer and super-hot. We had some fans going in there, but it was a total hot box in the middle of Manhattan. The inside of the sculpture was like a metal shop and directly outside of it is a busy Manhattan street corner; it was pretty crazy. We were working on the armature on the inside, which holds the pieces outside together. We did a lot of plasma cutting, bolting, and welding.
We worked with a couple of welders who had already been working on it for a long time; they were really fun to work with. We also worked with engineers. The whole project was based out of the UK, so we had people in the UK working with American engineers, which is who had to go through before we moved onto the next section. If we had any questions, we had to go through them, and they would confer with the engineers in the UK. It was a very careful process. The engineers gave us blueprints and we had to make sure we understood them. And before we welded even an inch, we had to go through the engineers and make sure we were on the same page with everything. We were dealing with very precise blueprints, very precise welding.
It sounds like an exciting project to have been a part of!
It was very exciting and I really liked the change of pace; going to New York and riding bikes to and from work every day. It was exhausting, but it was also really fun. And I like traveling for work so I would do it again. And after working on that I’m not afraid of really big projects, I feel more confident.
What was your experience like as a Women Who Weld participant?
I couldn't believe how much information I was taking in daily. I was super stoked to be learning a new skill. I was really excited and nervous because I didn't know what this path was going to lead to, but I was down and knew it was going to be okay as long as I kept an open mind and was willing to learn. I didn't really have an idea of what my career might be like five years from then but I didn't care, I was ready for the adventure and to have a new skillset and I knew it would be okay. And that's what I love about welding and fabrication, it's so varied; I knew it could involve any number of things like production welding or making bicycles or making furniture or working on sculptures. I still have a lot to learn and I'm excited to continue on this path.
You are still our highest scoring participant! You received 100% on every quiz, which we administer daily, and the final exam! In addition to the daily grind of learning a new hands-on skill, you also went home each day and reviewed what we discussed earlier in the day: material science, industrial technology, components of the machines, different welding applications, processes, and techniques, and so much more. And on the last day of the program you said to me, “If you’re ever looking to hire an instructor in the future, I would be so interested!” Two years later, we hired you!
I was so stoked when you asked me to be an instructor for Women Who Weld! And, as a participant, it was exciting to take in all the information, so the quizzes and tests were fun for me and it was easy for me to excel at them.
You were hired as a co-instructor in early 2020; we held our first and last program of the year in March 2020 before suspending in-person training due to the pandemic. Consequently, we didn’t raise funding for nearly a year and a half, but since resuming full programming in August 2021, how has your experience been as a co-instructor and how does it feel officially two years into it?
I think it's awesome, I still really love it. And I was super excited when you all hired me to be an instructor. And then I was super bummed when the pandemic hit and we couldn't continue with classes immediately. It's been really exciting that Women Who Weld made it through the pandemic and opened up the facility in Brooklyn, and we get to go there and have classes sometimes and it's just really great. Even though the content we're teaching is more or less the same for each training course, each class is so different because the participants are different and the energy is different. But, almost 100% of the time everyone is just excited to be there and that makes it exciting for me.
I also feel a lot more confident as an instructor than I did in the beginning. I was so nervous at first. Talking in front of people is not something I have ever felt comfortable with, so it feels really good to feel more comfortable with it.
What’s your favorite part about instructing?
My favorite part about being an instructor is recalling how excited I was to learn a new skillset and seeing that happen among the participants. I love seeing everyone timid or even a little frustrated the first day or two when they're welding and they can't quite get it, but then by the end of the day or toward the end of the week, they're just killing it and they're so excited. And I remember that feeling, it's really cool, and I love hearing about what all the participants do with their new skillset – it's really rewarding for me.
What’s your favorite part about working with Women Who Weld?
My favorite part is how well we work together and we’re fun and goofy behind the scenes, which is really awesome, but also very professional during the training. It's a very comfortable environment and I think it’s great.
Your dad was a welder, correct?
He’s retired but he was a welder and did fabrication work. I remember going with him to work. I doubt it was like ‘bring your kid to work day’ because it was kind of a rough environment, but I think he just didn't have a choice. And I remember going to the shop he was working at and him telling me, “Don't look at the bright lights,” and trying really hard not to even though I wanted to because he told me not to.
Did you ever think when you were a kid that you might follow that path as well?
I did not ever really think about it when I was growing up. And even when I was in school and tried it out, I was like, “I don't really know if this is the right place for me,” because it just seemed like such a manly place as that's simply the way that it has been for so long. I thought, “Oh, I just don't really fit in here” and there wasn’t really a place for me to get into it or try it out.
What does your dad think now that you’re a welder?
At first he didn't understand why I wanted to do it. But then I showed him the projects I’ve worked on and now he thinks it's really cool, he's really proud of me.
Where did you go to college and what did you study?
I studied art and got my BFA at UNC Asheville in North Carolina.
Have you always been an artist and is that why you pursued art?
I've been making art since I can remember and I always knew I wanted to continue that path and get better at it.
Do you feel that studying art in college was helpful to becoming a better artist?
Yeah, I think it definitely helped. As far as my discipline goes, just setting aside the time to create work, and work through issues or frustrations that I'm having, and actually spending the time to see it through.
What inspires your intricate drawings?
Different patterns and textures found in nature are huge inspirations for my drawing style. I often draw really intricate vine or vein-like patterns and it ends up creating this visceral, almost gross imagery sometimes, but I think it's also really beautiful as well. So joining both of those things together is what I'm really interested in. But also incorporating things from a female perspective and the female body – it's beautiful, but it's also a gross body just like everything else. Those are the aspects of what I'm trying to get at with my artwork.
Have you been making this sort of art for a long time, or is it a style you came into recently?
My artwork is kind of always changing and evolving and morphing over time. So, no, I haven't always been doing the most current work on my website. If you look at my past works, you can see they're a lot different than what I'm doing now. But yeah, that's kind of what I'm striving for: to keep changing, evolving, and morphing.
Have you drawn a tattoo or tattooed anyone?
Yeah, actually, I am actively tattooing which is really cool because I feel a lot of what I learned in welding transfers over to tattoo work. It's fun to think about travel speed and work angle, the way you hold the actual tattoo machine. I think about welding constantly when I'm tattooing.
How long does one of your more intricate pieces take to make?
I'm feeling really prolific at the moment and I'm able to crank out a couple of small paintings in a couple of days. But I tend to work on multiple pieces at once and I never actually keep track of one single piece that I'm working on. It helps with my workflow if I have multiple pieces going that I can bounce around to. Which kind of reflects the bigger picture with me and my career: I’m over here doing welding, and I've got my art thing and my tattoo thing over here, and then my band thing over here.
Do you take commissions?
Occasionally, and it can be kind of random, but usually it's a friend or a friend of a friend that's asking for a commission, and I have a big illustration project coming up. I also just got asked to be part of the art crew for this art store/gallery in Asheville. So I'm going to bring down a bunch of my prints and originals to sell at their store downtown, I'm really excited about that.
Do you still work on band album covers?
Yeah, that's my favorite type of work actually. I love to listen to a band’s music while creating the album art for them. That's one of my favorite art projects.
What’s your favorite type of music?
I'm kind of all over the place but I really get a lot done if I'm listening to something really heavy. I don't have a favorite metal band or sludge band or doom band, but I feel like that type of music really works well when I'm working on artwork. My work is kind of dark so it helps to come out.
Tell me more about your band. What type of music do you make? Which instrument do you play?
I've been playing in the band Womb Worm for about four or five years, since it was created. I play bass guitar and help on vocals. We call ourselves weirdo rock when we tell people about it, but it has elements of punk rock and sometimes some heavy riffs like metal, but it's kind of hard to put your finger on because it's just like really weird. Sometimes we get likened to Devo and sometimes Captain Beefheart.
Where do you play most of your gigs?
We mostly play in Detroit, although we have gone on tours into the South a few times. But I love playing basement shows or house shows, those are my favorite. We also play different dive bars around town like The Outer Limits Lounge; we’ve played there a bunch. And we're actually going to play at the Hamtramck Labor Day Festival in a couple of weeks.
You're a fabricator, welder, instructor, illustrator, painter, vocalist, and electric bass player. What does a typical day look like for you (if there is ever a typical day)?
I don't think there's a typical day unless I'm on a job welding, or it's a Women Who Weld work week. It varies and depends on what I'm working on. But lately, I get up in the morning, have my coffee, and then go straight to the studio and buckle down and work on my artwork that I'm preparing to take down south for the store.
What’s your favorite welding process, and why?
I really love to TIG weld, I think it's my favorite. I like that you can get clean pretty welds with it. It's a more involved process, it's more nuanced. And once you get into the groove, it's meditative, and I really like that about it.
What sort of tools and equipment do you use regularly when you’re fabricating?
Definitely a grinder with either a cut off wheel or a flap disc for sanding. I use band saws for cutting material, drill presses if anything needs holes in it. And for fitting, I always use clamps, and there's different types of clamps, but in the fabrication world you have to have a bunch of clamps. As far as marking tools, definitely a metal scribe to get really precise lines, sometimes I'll use a sharpie, but you have to be really careful and make sure you know which edge of the sharpie line that you're going to use to cut with. And for cleaning up the welds, I use a flap disc or a grinding wheel. And, at the very end, to actually clean the metal, I use acetone to get off any oil or dirt.
Has your income gone up or down now that you are a fabricator/welder?
Definitely up. Not so much when just starting out, but within a couple of years as a fabricator, it's gone up with the amount of skills I've learned and competence I've gained from it. I'm definitely making a lot more on the job when I'm doing fabrication work than I was five years ago.
How old are you?
39
What are your future career aspirations?
I’m kind of unsure. I know I want to keep making art and I'm also really thankful to have the welding skillset under my belt, so I'm sure I'll continue doing that and working with Women Who Weld too.
What do you like most about being a fabricator/welder?
I love building things with my hands and I love breaking the mold of the welding industry in that I'm a confident female who knows how to do her job and shows up on time. I love the confidence it's given me to go into a situation like, “Oh, yeah, I can handle this.” And I really love teaching other women to weld, so that they can experience that feeling as well.
“My favorite part about being an instructor is recalling how excited I was to learn a new skillset and seeing that happen among the participants.”
Do you have advice for women who may be interested in pursuing a path in welding?
It's definitely not glamorous, but I definitely recommend it. And always be open to learning new things, but know it's really hard on your body a lot of the time, so you have to take care of yourself and be really safe. And ask a ton of questions, as always in life.
What are some challenges you’ve encountered as a fabricator/welder, if any?
Constantly thinking about if I am doing things in a way that's not going to hurt myself later on; thinking about safety and the toll it's taking on my body. Just trying to go easy on myself, which is kind of challenging in the metal fabrication world, or at least with the kind of jobs I have worked on.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I love riding my bicycle and being on a river. I love canoeing; I grew up canoeing and kayaking, so I love doing that and camping. Outdoor activities are usually my jam if the weather's nice.
If you were not a fabricator/welder, which career path may you have chosen instead?
I'm kind of straddling two career paths, so I suppose if I could successfully be a professional artist in some capacity then that would be my choice.
If you could travel anywhere, where would you go and why?
I love traveling and next up I'm trying to decide if I should set my sights on visiting Italy or Colombia. I want to see all of Italy, but I really want to check out Sicily, because that’s where my family is from. If I can make headway in trying to get my Italian citizenship, then I would definitely choose Italy over Colombia, but it's been challenging to get an appointment at the Italian consulate.