Lisa Pirkle knew she was an artist when she was five years old. But she never guessed as a child that someday she would be creating art with a welder and a plasma torch.

Lisa’s creations, displayed at her studio in Gainesville, Georgia, span a wide range of media and materials, including painting, sculptures, mosaics, pottery, wall sculptures, fountains, birdbaths and more. In 2002, a friend gave her a frog cut from metal with a plasma torch, and she was instantly intrigued with the possibilities. She contacted Jeff Winn at Smith Welding in Holly Springs, Georgia. After talking at length about what she wanted to do and what materials and thicknesses she would be working with, Jeff recommended the ESAB PowerCut 650 cutting package.

PowerCut 650 is a ready-to-cut plasma package designed to deliver big cutting power in a portable package. It can manually cut up to 5/8 in. (15.9 mm) and sever 3/4 in. (19.0 mm), and features an adjustable output that tailors the current to the material being cut.

This durable, easy-to-use package fit her budget and could easily cut the 20 gauge to 1/4-inch sheet metals she wanted to work with. A friend gave her an old 50 lb. metal barrel to practice cutting on, and from her very first try – cutting out a fish – she says she was “jumping up and down because it was so easy.”

“That tool took my art to a whole new level,” she says. “You want to do things that are a little different. You need to set yourself apart from the pack.” With a little practice and experimentation, Lisa began to create all kinds of art from used scraps of metal and her favorite sheet metal, copper. The PowerCut 650, which had seemed like an expensive investment for a struggling artist, paid for itself in a month’s time.

She begins by drawing a template on paper. If she likes the design, she transfers the template to wood and uses that template to trace the design onto the metal. Then she cuts out the shape. “It’s like drawing a line with a torch,” she says.

She then adds additional cuts as needed, for example to make the scales on a fish. She combines shapes into a painting or a backsplash for the wall of a kitchen by welding or gluing the metal pieces to wood, concrete, metals or other materials. She finishes by painting the surface of the metal or coloring the metal with the heat of an acetylene torch.

Lisa’s favorite subjects tend to be those found in nature, such as fish, birds, frogs and turtles, as well as musical instruments and more. She has recently started a line of work using reclaimed and found materials. She calls these pieces Get Green Art. In addition to doing works that strike her fancy, Lisa also takes commissions. You can view many of her works at her websites: www.bonefishartgallery.com, www.getgreenart.com and www.createascene.biz.

For more information on the PowerCut 650, visit ESAB’s website at www.esabna.com.