Sculpting Metal Roses

Sculpting Metal Roses

Parks Tacoma welder Koyi Clay puts the finishing touches on a new, hand-made gate for the vintage Point Defiance Park rose arbor.

Tacoma, WA: Focusing intently, Koyi Clay steadies a slim curve of steel with one thickly-gloved hand. Sparks fly around his protective gear like shooting stars as he welds, balancing on a ladder. Then he stops, flips up his visor and takes a satisfied look: a metal rose, sculpted petal by petal and now resting inside a tall metal frame like a stained-glass window.

It’s the finishing touch on the pièce de resistance of the new rose arbor in Point Defiance Park – a 15×20-foot gate, complete with two giant metal roses in the center.

Koyi Clay welds the rose gate centerpiece.

Designed by Clay, a Parks Tacoma fabricator, in collaboration with garden staff and shop management team Doug Sawyer and Mike Yaden, the gate is unique. It’s built specifically to fit the new, bigger metal arches installed last winter in the historic arbor. Created to be both welcoming to human visitors and a barrier to hungry park deer, the gate will open easily with two hinged side “doors”, each filled by Clay with a series of diagonal steel bars in eye-pleasing patterns. It’s plenty tall enough for everyone, including the six-foot-some park laborers who will use it daily to tend to their 200 rose canes.

But it’s the center panel that Clay is most proud of – a unique design invented by him to fill the gate with beauty, while using materials that were both available and not too costly.

“First I thought I would bend a steel bar into petals inside a section of really wide pipe,” explains Clay, taking a break from welding. “But the wide pipe would have taken way too long to get here and was really expensive. So I thought, why don’t I cut cross-sections of a three-inch pipe instead, and arrange them into petals to make a rose?”

Clay drew out his design first, a series of overlapping semi-circles expanding outward from a central circle. Then he cut those semi-circles out of cross-sections of the steel pipe, using a welder to widen each as necessary. Arranging them on the floor in a flower pattern, he painstakingly welded each to the next, building the rose. Finally, he crafted long stems and leaves from a three-inch flat steel bar and made a second smaller rose.

The process took months. At last, in early May, he was ready to put it all together. First welding the big rose on the bottom, then the stem, leaves and smaller rose on top, Clay sculpted the gate with the same dedication as the park crew used earlier to prune and lay out the real rose canes, some of which date back to the original arbor built at least 50 years ago.

The result? Astounding beauty in a gate that will do its job for another half-century or more.

“People just love the gardens in Point Defiance Park, and the rose arbor is a really special place of peace and beauty,” says Joe Brady, deputy director of regional parks. “We’re so proud of our park and shop staff who work hard to keep them beautiful for future generations. Koyi has a special talent and we’re lucky to have him.”

“I’m proud of this,” says Clay, with a quiet smile. “I like coming up with new things, finding solutions. It’ll be great to see this gate in place, for people to enjoy.”

Enjoy it they will – the historic arbor has always been the delight of bridal couples, grads, photographers, rose-lovers and tourists alike. With the new arbor, there’s already a taller, more inviting space and more expansive view down the center.

And when the gate is installed in early June, there’ll be a stunning entry way as well. Stay tuned.