Local artist sees steampunk success

Wahkiakum County resident Dan Westlind has lived an interesting and varied life. He is well known for making beautiful knives and now he's getting a name for his work in steampunk and industrial age art. He was recently asked to show some of his pieces at the Antique Powerland Museum in Brooks, Ore.

"Steampunk is the fastest growing art form in America," Westlind said. "Industrial recycled, machine age stuff. I do a combination of all of it."

A former welder and machinist, he was hurt on the job and retired 10 years ago. He has a steel plate in his neck and another one in his left wrist from an old injury he got trying to break a horse.

Westlind figures he broke his neck years ago when he got hit by part of a machine one night. He went to the hospital for a concussion and to get some stitches. They never did check his neck.

"I couldn't drive and I could hardly eat," he said. "They went in and realized that two vertebrae had slid off and were fused together at an angle pinching the cord. In a few more months, I would have been paralyzed from the waist down. They had to cut everything loose, it was a pretty drastic surgery."

A fan of old horror movies like the Bride of Frankenstein, Westlind relates.

"I feel a bit like Frankenstein myself," he said.

His shop is lined with a collection of antique medical and dental equipment. A children's book sits on the shelf filled with old medicine bottles, Dr. Dan at the Circus.

"Those are my credentials," Westlind laughed.

Westlind has already won numerous awards for knife making. He still makes knives but these days he's more focused on the industrial and steampunk work.

He's got two pieces finished in a space age trilogy using bones he's found to create alien warships. He uses old banks shaped like rockets and hood ornaments to represent fighters from earth.

"I'm not the only one doing it," Westlind said. "I've got kind of a hybrid between steampunk and industrial age. I recycle upscale stuff. I'm not just stuck on the steampunk stuff. Everybody has got their style and they stick with it, but I kind of bounce around, so I make a lot of different stuff."

• There's a crane light with a fishing reel as a winch.

• An old brass scale and the base of an old soda fountain are coupled to create another light.

• A sea water strainer has been transformed into a light. It bubbles. "Light's sell. Even the little stuff. People can justify buying it if it's a light," Westlind said.

• An old drill press stand makes a plant stand for an entry way.

• He uses cobbler shoe forms for coffee table legs.

"I get to make and repurpose things," Westlind said. "That's what's fun about this activity."

It's about creativity and problem solving, family time and alone time, and finding things at swap meets or garage sales or auctions. His daughter, Julie, manages his website and helps him find parts for what he calls his boneyard, where he finds inspiration and pieces to complete his art.

"They have a big swap meet down at Brooks and we pick up a lot of stuff there," Westlind said. "It's usually a pickup load of stuff that I bring home. It's farm and old household stuff that I utilize. Unfortunately that stuff is drying up."

As for his work, he doesn't believe in forcing it.

"I'm not out here seeing how many pieces I can make or how fast I can do it," Westlind said. "That's how people fall short. That's forced art. I let everything come to me in a natural way. I'm out here trying to brainstorm but sometimes I only get a shower or sprinkle."

"Sometimes I will look at something and instantly I know what I'm going to make. Sometimes you might sit on something for two or three years. It's challenging, but I have more fun with it," he continued. "There are times I'll go out and cut brush or mow the field and get my mind off it and two days later I'll be laying in bed, unable to sleep and it will pop in my head."

He's also working on a knife right now.

He started around 1980 by taking old knives with broken handles and replacing them. Eventually he began making his own blades. He became interested in Damascus blades after reading about Japanese sword smiths making Damascus steel for the old Samurai swords.

"Having a background in metallurgy," Westlind said, "I started playing around with it. The first two pieces I forged were out of logging cable, which gives you a kind of snakeskin pattern. It's evolved and now I can predetermine the pattern I'm going to make."

His work won him several awards and brought him some friends. One friend, Howie, would come to the knife show in Puyallup dressed in buckskins and showing interest in Westlind's work. They became friends. One day, Westlind brought his son Jason, who stared incredulously at the man in leather.

"Do you know who that is?" Jason asked. It turned out to be Howard Leese, a guitarist for the band Heart.

Westlind shared a story about the time a friend asked him to come up with something to market at the Bicentennial in Astoria. Westlind ended up finding a knife used in the Lewis and Clark Expedition in a magazine. The magazine said that it was stored at Fort Clatsop. The people at Fort Clatsop had no idea they had such a piece and went into their huge vault looking for it.

"I took pictures and made a replica," Westlind said. "My friend's jaw dropped when he saw it. He thought I'd stolen it."

He met with Gale Norton who was the Secretary of the Interior at the time and she requisitioned more replicas that would be fully licensed to the National Park Service and given a serial number. They would be sold.

There is one now at Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello and another in St. Paul. According to Westlind, the governors of Washington, Idaho and Oregon were also given one.

Westlind was born in Astoria and grew up in Clatskanie. He met his wife Donna at Port Westward and they moved to the area 42 years ago. They raised two kids, Jason and Julie, and fostered some more. He worked on motorcycles and even built his own. At one time he was a kind of preacher in a motorcycle ministry.

"I used to do a lot of counseling at the Naselle Youth Camp," Westlind said. "Lots of work in prisons and stuff, holding Sunday services at Oregon State Prison. Our kids knew kids who were runaways or were having problems at home. We took them in."

"We look back and at one point we had six teenagers here," he added. "You wonder how you ever survived. I think it was probably easier having teenagers than it would have been if they were younger."