Tristan Dare

Kuna, Idaho, USA

Member: 2023 (Guest)

        

        At the age of 11, the fascination for working with my hands began as I touched into the interest of woodworking. Learning the craft with my grandfather, over the years and as my passion grew, I found myself competing and winning in woodworking competitions across the state of Arizona. Though as my need for better tools grew, I began to forge the tools I needed. The more I forged them, there was something about metalworking that was so captivating; there my interest sparked. Woodworking in the past, the next few years I spent nearly every day finding some way to make a knife with the goal in mind to make each one better than the last. This pushed me to find my imperfections, learn techniques and processes to make my work better, and eventually led to a curiosity of finding more fascinating materials to work with. At 15 years old, I found this iron rock on the internet that I really wanted. On Christmas morning, I opened a present to find a 1.7 lb. meteorite sitting in my lap. 

 

        For 2 years I studied and grew more familiar with the alloy, as I needed to find a way to utilize the material in the goal to preserve the meteorite in its most natural state possible after forging… In 2020 at 17 years old, I forged the knife that changed my life. This was the first successful attempt at preserving the fragile Widmanstätten crystalline structure in the meteorite, finding myself in Blade Magazine soon after and nominated the Wooden Sword Award in 2022. Inspired by nature, history, and the mystery of our universe; my designs are reflected to present the material in a piece that displays the imagination of its untold stories. 

 

        The ancient is appreciated through its beauty in age, as an artist lies the vision of the transformation to the new… Representing the old in redefined beauty of its former life.