Moises Orozco takes his art seriously, body and soul. Having stepped off precipitous heights to be reborn with new insights in life, love and the material world, Orozco continues to create multidimensional images out of steel, aluminum, titanium and recycled fabricated metal.

A self-taught metal fabricator, Orozco cut his teeth on industrial projects at Caid Industries, Sun Mechanical and Desert Precision before setting out on the path of the working artist. He chose metal because it’s difficult to destroy, a rationale grounded in a hard won lesson when he entrusted an oeuvre of paintings to an art teacher that disappeared in a mysterious janitorial episode.

“My mentor is my imagination,” he explains. “Teaching myself new techniques, drawing, painting, metal sculpting is an escape from the environment I’m in.” Dramatic in his approach to traveling a path as he is in creating otherworldly expressions in his images, Orozco is a work in progress. “I crave a rite of passage experience, an unraveling then reassembling my experience of reality,” he says cryptically, knowing the truth of the ancient saying, “Before enlightenment, one must chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, one must chop wood and carry water.” And so he continues to take on commission work, longing for the time when simply his imagination propels him.

In a digital age of three dimensional printing, the quasi-blacksmith artist seems like an anomaly. However, people crave Orozco’s industrial art. His workspace near the railroad tracks off the last ancient strip of Main Street could be confused for a junk yard. Rusted metal of every conceivable type, size and shape is strewn about. The ethereal light of a plasma torch slices through metal as though butter; beads of an arc welder stick, touched ever so lightly in succession, becomes an adornment; hammer pings on chisel, sending an f# into the cosmos, as folds and wrinkles make the metal texture cloth-like by Orozco’s hand. Grinding welds disappear in a seam, leaving the observer puzzled and amazed at close examination.

“I am passionate about bringing joy to myself and others.” His enthusiasms are infectious. “I love being versatile, taking on new and challenging projects,” he says. Voracious in his desire for challenges that call on his imagination to answer, the artist will take on any and all projects offered him. “If it can be visualized, it can be materialized.”

The handmade steel Ganesh is a personal project that was constructed calling on his toolbox of techniques distinct from the well-known Athena and Alice anamorphic sculptures. Both Athena’s tresses of bicycle chain dreadlocks and Alice’s locks of hanging metal strips work. The Ganesh appears as though molded, yet its construction examples Orozco’s genius.

Young enough to take chances and recover from missteps, but old enough to have a perspective on the experiences he has put himself through consciously and unconsciously, Orozco’s appetite is transforming. Needing less drama of self-destruction, seeking more aspiration and inspiration, the artist continues chopping wood and carrying water on both his personal path and in his workshop.

Orozco’s ability to shape and bind metals parallels the alchemy he applies to his personal development.

“I am an individual trying to wake up the Spirit inside of me,” says the artist. His fire burns as bright and hot as the furnace in the Main Street studio used to soften metal. “I love all unconditionally and open myself to others. I’m preparing for some dramatic changes in my life,” muses Orozco. “The world is about to change itself. We gotta be ready for it.”

Moises Orozco continues to accept commissions and offers his manifestations in the marketplace. He can be reached through 520-304-5159, Moises-Orozco.org and by appointment at his workshop at 801 N. Main St., in Tucson.

Dale Bruder is a freelance writer interested in creative people, social and cultural movements and applications of ancient esoteric knowledge. He can be reached at 520-331-1956 or [email protected].