Meet The Welder - Sarah Mae Art

From being told she didn't have the skills by her teachers at school, Sarah's art has been admired by thousands on TikTok. It just goes to show, the teacher isn't always right!. Meet the Welder - Sarah Mae Art.

At R-Tech, we appreciate the work our customers use their machines for. We tend to check our social media accounts to see what we have been tagged in and Sarah's work really caught our attention. Her work is something to be inspired by and it was no surprise to us to see the amount of followers she had accumulated on TikTok.

If you follow us on Instagram and Facebook, you would have certainly come across Sarah's work in a couple of our posts. We thought it would be a good idea to get in touch with her for a Meet the Welder post and find out where Sarah's love of metal sculpture work had originated.

Tell us a bit about yourself -

I am Sarah Mae Francis, I’m 19 yo, from Rossendale Lancashire. I first started welding when I was 16. My dad is a mechanic and had lots of tools and equipment such as welders and grinders etc. I was handed a welder and a grinder and my dad basically said, “figure it out yourself”. 

What inspired you to get into creating metal scupltures?

I noticed that my dad was throwing a lot of broken car parts and tools away, which were unwanted and seen as waste. This is when I thought it would be interesting to make something from them. Me and my dad went into Selfridges once and we saw this huge transformer made from car parts and thought it was amazing, it was interesting to see people notice parts on the sculpture and how the artist used that shape of car part to show the features on the transformer. 

Do you have a favourite piece of art?

Horses have always been apart of my life and thought doing a life size horse as my first project would be a challenge and also be really striking. A few hours here and there, throughout my last year of high school, I made Rusty. I think she is my favourite piece I have done, as she was my first sculpture and when people see her, they don’t notice at first what she’s made out of and then they are amazed by the work that I put into her. 

What welding machines do you use?

My dad and uncle bought a Butters welder when they were still in school, and used it to repair old cars. This was 30+ years ago. And even to this day it lives on and it is well used!!!! However over the years, parts on the welder, have started to brake and needed to be replaced, Butters are no longer available and we needed some parts. This is when we found R-Tech, we were amazed at the quality of the gear, and order many parts and safety equipment. Soon after we also purchased a Plasma P30C, and the newest addition to the collection is a TIG161 AC/DC welder, which I’m still learning to use.

You have a pretty impressive TikTok account, with over 35k followers. What effect has this had on your scuplting?

When I first started Sarah Mae Art as a full time metal sculpture artist , I never would of thought that people would be interested in what artwork I do. However, when one of my videos went viral I was absolutely amazed at all the comment supporting my work and what I do. But a lot of the comments were saying “dude that is amazing” or “ you are a really talented guy” and “keep up the good work man”. Which was funny for me as people automatically believed that a man was making the sculptures. But at the time, I replied saying ‘not bad for a 18 yo girl , ay?” And then they would reply amazed and mind blown. Which gave me more confidence in my work. 

Where did you learn how to weld?

After leaving high school, I studied art and design at college, at this point I wasn’t really doing any metalwork because my tutors couldn’t teach me how I can use welding and grinding in my artwork because, of health and safety issues. However, in the last term/ project I could pick a topic of my own choice, I wanted to do my metal work. My tutors were adamant that I shouldn’t do it ‘because they haven’t taught me the skills’. Anyway, I didn’t take any notice and did it anyway, and I got the highest grade possible.

Any advise to someone who is just leaving school and wanting to get into welding themselves?

What I would say to student who are in school or leaving school is teachers aren’t always right and do whatever it takes to achieve your goals.