By Judy Barlow, Citizen Journalist

Heather Gunning and Gord Langston make a career out of persuading people to view metal in a whole new light. Working out of their home/studio, these local artists create amazing and amusing works from reclaimed metal. Visitors are welcome, but allow plenty of time. Apparently there’s a time warp on Sidney’s Pleasant Street.
Any tour begins informally with the dried-grass fence broadcasting, “Artists live here.” The ‘official’ tour starts at the curb, running through the yard, into the house, and out back into that scary, fascinating workshop where the magic happens. A few lucky guests might receive a gift to take home: a rusty sprocket; a ball bearing, or even a ‘blue’ widget. It all depends on how buttoned-down and strait-laced you are when you leave, relative to how buttoned down and strait-laced you were when you arrived: a reminder to lighten up and toss out the ‘rules’ concerning creativity and art.
But make no mistake: it’s not easy to do what they do, and do it well; and your junk is their art, fetching a pretty price on the international as well as the local market. Their award-winning work is in great demand, and despite the sixteen to eighteen hour workdays, they’re hard pressed to keep up.
Watch your shins wandering about – tough to do when you’re looking up, down, and around. The jam-packed garden nurtures rescued plants, including an industrious musa, hard at work producing tiny bananas, a pair of rebellious kiwis producing lots of flowers but adamantly refusing to produce any fruit, and a thriving ginkgo rejected by Butchart Gardens because it was apparently unproductive, gathering moss instead of doing whatever healthy ginkgos are supposed to do. Although she doesn’t speak Chinese to the ginkgo, Heather confesses that she does talk to the plants as she hand-waters them.
And the art! It’s everywhere. “Everything here has been recycled and reclaimed. It’s kind of a challenge to look at something and see what you can create with it,” says Heather, pointing out frogs, bugs, and even a hippopotamus. Right now they’re building bird baths, always a popular seller.
As you head into the house Heather casually points out a pair of old boots. “Gord made those for the movie, Santa Claus 2.” Inside, a dozen or more clocks vie for a moment of your time, including an award-winning grandfather clock with a pressure cooker face and a drive-shaft stand. Art covers the walls and tables, lines the walkway, and hangs from the cupboards and ceiling. A giant eagle perched on a nearby table consumed about 3000 hours of Gord’s ‘spare time’ over the course of a year.
“Some people walk in here and it’s a little overwhelming but it’s pretty obvious we’re not your nine to five kind of people,” says Heather. She’s not kidding. At first glance to the untrained, non-artist eye it might seem like chaos, but a closer look reveals that not only is it highly organized there isn’t a speck of dust to be seen. Everything has its place and is in its place, although not for long, as everything is for sale – for a price. “We remodel, remake, re-do all the time. The house is always evolving. Every day there’s things coming out of the studio. We’re constantly, all the time creating,” claims Heather.

While existing artwork leaves and new pieces take their place, Heather points out that people often remark that she doesn’t try to sell her art. “You can’t sell art,” she muses. “People have to want it. If you like it you like it.”

The workshop is a no-nonsense industrial area piled with fire extinguishers, golf putters, gears, pipes, and the real workhorse: rebar. Tons of it. Assorted tools and torches for shaping, joining, colouring, and burnishing metal abound.
“Gord used to be a chainsaw carver,” Heather explains, “and we work really well together. He’s very concrete and sort of realistic. My background is in graphic art. I did a lot of abstracts and think outside the box. Gord lives in terror of me doing a big piece because they’re all kind of angular and dangerous. So he’ll help me with some ideas. It’s kind of neat when we work together to see what comes out of the process.”

To see for yourself what comes out of the process, call 250 655-5239 or visit their website at pleasantstreetstudio.com and arrange a tour. Take your wallet and your sense of humour. You’ll want one and need the other.

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