Woman of Steel

A Minneapolis metalsmith with a contemporary twist

Marcia McEachron

By Megan Kaplan ~ Midwest Home Magazine - April 2008 
Every blacksmith is naturally drawn to steel yards. But Minneapolis artist Marcia McEachron took it a step further. “I moved to Northeast because I wanted to be near the yard,” says the 61-year-old metalsmith who began manipulating steel nearly 30 years ago. “It’s so convenient.”

Convenience tends to be at a premium when metal is your medium. Just consider the storage, transportation, and physical strength it takes to work with hundreds of pounds of steel. “My rule is any sculpture bigger than I am is sent to the metal fabricator,” says McEachron, who collaborates with Linders Specialty Company in St. Paul to build her giant public sculptures. The partnership has produced the whimsical, green prehistoric-size leaves that serve as bus shelters at University and Fairview in St. Paul, and Nicollet and 60th in Minneapolis, as well as the public commission she’s currently working on, a 9-foot-tall stainless steel pinecone that will glimmer from the center of a stone path maze in Edina’s Centennial Lakes Park. McEachron, an avid hiker, says she finds “tremendous meaning” in nature’s humble forms.

Growing up in Milwaukee as an only child to a single working mother, McEachron had to find ways to entertain herself. She filled her days with sketching—a passion that led her to the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she earned the school’s first drawing and painting degree in 1970. After graduating, she spent eight years working in arts administration at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Minneapolis American Indian Center before stumbling upon what would become her life’s work.

“One day in 1978, I walked into a blacksmith shop in Uptown and there was this guy working the metal,” says McEachron. “He was teaching classes, so I signed up.” Tool by tool, apprenticeship by apprenticeship, McEachron hammered away at the age-old craft, gradually gaining recognition in the public and private spheres for her contemporary spin on hand-forged steel furniture and art.