Heavy metalwork
with Pete Mattila

Forging connections between art and the environment happens naturally in the Off Season.

For artist and industrial blacksmith Pete Mattila, winter in Tasmania is also an ideal time to test your limits.

“When it's really dark, it's cold, sometimes the rain is coming in sideways … that's when you find where your edges are,” he says.

Watch the video to take a look at Mattila Studio's Off Season offers from winters past.

Mattila embraces the Off Season chill with his morning swimming ritual in the River Derwent, right out front of his studio in Hobart’s historical Battery Point.

"It's been the best thing – fully immersing, using that cold and using what's here outside your front door as your medicine."

In previous winters, he has also prodded the heavy steel door of Mattila Studio open to visitors, offering sell-out blacksmithing events and workshops that draw people from across the country.

“It allows me to share that passion I have for steelwork and metal, and the creative side of metalwork,” Mattila says.

Workshops cover everything from forging essentials to crafting Japanese-style chef knives, filling the cosy workshop with the warmth of fire and the heavy sounds of the tools and industrial machinery of the trade. In one Off Season workshop, attendees made blades using purely Tasmanian iron ores.

“That's very specific to the place,” he says, “where we actually start with the rock or the ore and we smelt all of that down and then fuse it together.

Forging, making something that is actually heirloom quality – you're going to have these objects that you make with us forever.

From his first exposure to blacksmithing, Mattila was captivated. As an apprentice, he saw the potential for the practical to be transferred into an art context, which led him to work on large-scale installations and sculpture.

“What inspires me is the processes of the craft – it has inspired the artwork. Mastering the craft has allowed me a palette to be able to draw from in designing the work that I make today,” he says.

“Now I'm in a position where I feel like I can share some of that knowledge and running these workshops is part of being able to do that.”  

Natural bond

Mattila arrived in Tasmania while travelling and fell in love with the landscape. After years splitting time between the island and his native United States, he realised Tasmania had his heart.

“I'd wake up in the morning and think I could hear the birds from [Tasmania] when I was over [in the United States]. I’m like, ‘I know what this is – Tasmania is my place’. And I listened to that.”

He’s since put down deep roots on the island, maintaining his workshop and space, and growing his community.

Mattila acknowledges there’s something different that Tasmania has to offer visitors – a uniqueness of spirit that comes with life on a small island at the edge of the Earth.

“There's a lot of ‘do it yourself’ mentality. And being curious of that is my biggest advice. Because that's something really special.”

It’s the quirky, off-the-beaten-track towns, roadside stalls and tiny local businesses that appeal most to Mattila.

Each Off Season, he makes a solo pilgrimage to the west coast to spend time on the remote and rugged coastline.

“That's where the wild is,” he says.

Regardless of where on the island you travel, for anyone wanting to truly immerse in winter, Mattila has some sage advice:

Make the cold your friend. Also, make the amount of dark over light, make that your friend. Learn how to be with it.

For Mattila, the raw feelings provoked by the island’s natural environment share a bond with his work.

“It's not a fully choreographed experience, taking a bushwalk in Tasmania. There's still proper wild happening and that makes me feel really human,” he says.

“And it's the same when I'm forging steel. All I can think about is that moment of what's happening at that time and it's so real.

“That's what I want to fill my life with – as much real stuff as possible.”