For most of her professional career, Amie Jacobsen was a graphic designer, painter and children’s book illustrator. Then, about seven years ago, she decided to take up welding.
"From the time I was a little kid," she said, "all I thought was, you know, I was gonna be an artist."
Jacobsen moved to the Kansas City metro area in 2007. Originally from Colorado, she studied studio art and painting in college there before moving with two young kids to Georgia to earn an MFA in illustration at Savannah College of Art and Design.
Here, she taught online classes, illustrated children’s books and created paintings for galleries.
"At some point," she said, "I was just getting burnt out."
Searching for a new direction, she was watching a local arts show on Kansas City PBS when inspiration struck.
"I saw a shop on Arts Upload on the public TV station one night (when I was) working on an illustration," she said, "and it was called Machine Head, owned by Dick Jobe."
So she called Jobe, who ran the fabrication shop in the Crossroads Arts District, to see if he had some ideas about where she could learn to weld.
"He just was really kind and said, 'Well, I take interns sometimes. Why don't you come down and you can run errands for me and, you know, and I'll teach you some welding.'"
Jacobsen spent two years working full-time in the shop. During that time, she met artists working on public art and sculpture projects and knew she wanted to give it a try.
She won her first large commission — a twisty stainless-steel piece — for a hospital in Davenport, Iowa. But, first, she needed her own tools.
"So I went and rented my own space and bought a welder, some cutting wheels, an angle grinder, and a chop saw," she said with a laugh, "and built a sculpture."
That was back in 2017. Jacobsen now creates sculptures, furniture and public art pieces in her own studio in Independence, Missouri.
Some, crafted from stainless steel and glass, take inspiration from nature, such as plants and insects — wildflowers up to 12 feet tall in Oklahoma; a 12-foot butterfly in Florida; and a 12-foot sunflower in Kansas.
On a recent tour of Jacobsen's shop in an industrial building in Independence, two of her assistants were hard at work on her latest installation called “Gateway,” a sunflower-shaped arch for Meadowbrook Park in Prairie Village, Kansas.
"So we are in the middle of making petals and pieces and parts for all the petals," she said, "and starting to get our main structure ready."
When it’s installed this summer, it will be the first public art in the 80-acre park.
The center of the sunflower is a nearly 12-foot tall archway with 24 petals made of cast glass and steel.
"But also important to this piece will be these illustrated panels that go up the sides of the arches, inside the center of the flower that presents the history of the park and the surrounding area," she said.
The panels will be covered with mirror polished stainless steel, and as people walk through, they’ll see their own reflections.
Jacobsen’s shop is tucked into a residential neighborhood just down the street from Englewood Arts. So there’s synergy with the Independence arts district.
Jacobsen and her husband, Tim O’Neill, bought this building back in July. He runs The Urban Lumber Company, repurposing lumber harvested from local trees.
They also have plans for a showroom and a community woodshop.
"It would be for like four or five people who could rent out a designated area," she says, "and then they can share all the big tools that most people don't have in their garages."
Jacobsen says she hopes the space will provide a new direction for other artists — as well as sustain her own.
