What may look like junk or scrap metal to you in a garage or workshop, can be repurposed to create art. From instruments to large scale detailed pieces, Fabrigas Belize Limited challenged students to use their creativity to produce something unique, made entirely from scrap and recycled metal. It's the first time they held the competition for schools, and here's what we saw at the event today. Jomarie Lanza reports.
It's art made entirely of recycled pieces of metal, a time consuming effort that required hours of welding and precision just to get these beautiful and unique pieces. Fabrigas Belize hosted its first ever welded metal art competition for secondary schools and ITVETs today, in hopes that it would encourage more young persons to pursue welding as a trade. The organiser for the competition says the pieces exceeded their expectations:
Justin Sabido, Sales Manager, Fabrigas Belize Ltd
"You know to attract students into the welding field in particular. It's hard to do because it's hot, it's dirty and it's heavy work. And so it's not so attractive and appealing. So what we are trying to do is to make welding fun. We are trying to make it appealing."
"We have asked each school to submit one piece for judging, but we have not limited them to only one piece. We told them, 'If your students have other good pieces, please bring them to be displayed,' because today is a day for the students. This is a day for everyone to see their talent and creativity."
"So, we have these six pieces that will be judged. We also have a beautiful go-kart by ITVET Orange Walk and a few smaller pieces on display that students worked on in their own time."
"The students have done all the work here, and if you notice, all these pieces are made from recycled metal. We asked specifically for recycled materials to teach them the value of recycling. On a job site, the reality is that if something breaks, you go into your metal heap or spare parts and try to fix it on the spot rather than running to a store."
"These are their creations-they had to go out, find the materials, come up with their ideas, and then put the pieces together."
A total of 7 schools were present today, but only 6 pieces were entered, but that didn't stop other students from bringing their work to showcase at the competition. We spoke to one of the students from Mopan Tech who helped to work on this, quite literal "Heavy Metal" Guitar.
Raquel Coyoc
"Our piece is a guitar and it was constructed by the fourth formers, they were working on it for a few weeks and it's right there."
"We at Mopan we are very competitive so anytime we hear about a competition we want to enter as soon as we heard about it. And here we are right now and why got me into welding was that when I was little my step dad works on it a lot and I got interested in it but he never wanted to teach me the practical of it and I knew the basics like the types of welding and how to do it but I never got to do the practical and at Mopan we do the actual practical."
And by midday the judging session commenced with a panel of 7 judges from different industries. They judged based on not only creativity it also dimensions, complexity and the use of recycled materials.
Tracy Grant, Judge, Professional Welder
"I notice we have aluminum mixed with regular steel, copper all of those combined together so it will be quite difficult because the students right now in today's day they are very creative and they mixed a lot of metals together and they even teach us along the way."
"It's time consuming, it's experience and it's also about your love for welding, because to make a masterpiece like this you really need to sit down and create it in your mind, select different pieces you would want to use with art work and put all together. So it is very time consuming, it's mind draining and it's a masterpiece for the person or welder who loves what they do."
First place went to ITVEt Orange Walk, second to ITVET Toledo. And third to Julian Cho technical high school.
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