My friend Stephen Bondi is finally dead.  I say finally because Stephen had kept death at arm’s length for the past twenty years. The tumor that grew around Stephen’s brain stem impinged upon many important glands that are in the center of the skull and impeded his hormone balance, which had a disastrous effect throughout his body.  The tumor also eventually cost him his eyesight. And last of all his indomitable will to live.

The following paragraph is from a recommendation I wrote for Stephen in 1996. The over-the-top tone is for the benefit of the grant committee.

“In the late 1960's and the early 1970's there was a spontaneous rekindling of the smiths' fires all around the United States. Young men and women were drawn to this "dying art" and many, myself included, began to follow the trade as a livelihood. The gap between the time when this kind of work had last flourished and when it was again taken up was long enough for most of the masters to have died off. We were left with a thin heritage: the gothic revival of Samuel Yellin and colonial reproduction. Then along came Stephen Bondi, who had been to Italy and had worked in a "modern" shop. He had caught the European fever to work steel to its plastic limits, to treat composition as something more than the layering of techniques and to develop the finish as an opportunity to show the surface of the forging in its most dramatic light. He shared his enthusiasm with anyone who would listen.”

Stephen’s relentless creativity branched out in several directions after it became evident that he would be unable to continue to forge.  We did a group of outdoor lights in the late eighties where he art-directed me into an aesthetic of which I had been aware, but had never felt comfortable with.  Stephen showed me how to combine the elements in to a whole that was compelling to look at and, when time allowed, fun to explore.

In time even being in the shop was too hard on his body.  The jarring of the power hammer coming through his shoes as he walked about the shop was too painful. 

At this time Stephen settled into a small house in Berkeley, California, and went back to a field he had explored as a graduate student.  He did strange things to plastic.  He heated, pinched, tugged, pierced, and most of all, plated plastic vessels. Turning to the material he had the most of, he used his pill bottles, those amber tubes that we all have and that Stephen had in abundance.  He would poke at them with hot things and then leave them in a plating bath for days building up huge deposits that would organize themselves in unexpected ways much as the early universe did in concentrations and voids.  Then he moved on to PVC pipe, playing the white plastic against colored dyes and plated metals, patinas and even forging the copper leads that were attached to the anode and cathode.  Some of the resulting pieces will be on display at the ABANA Gallery in Kentucky this summer.

In the early 90’s ABANA and CBA  NWBA and help fund a trip Stephen took to Italy. He went to Milan to photograph the works of Mazzucotelli and Rizzardo, two Italian smiths of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Stephen took these photos and reworked them with his computer adding another layer of artistry to these beautiful images of great iron work. 

Stephen Bondi’s body betrayed him, but he never allowed pain or physical impairment to stop his creative drive.  I will miss my friend.

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