Wade Skinner & Co, Metal Art, Western Art, Cowboy Art

Inseparable from his cowboy hat, boots and jeans, and occasionally sporting a Colt 45 on his hip, Wade Skinner has always been drawn to rugged tales of pioneer hardship and American Indian spiritual values. An eager student of Western settlement history and the sad tale of the displacement of native American tribes, he is also an avid collector of Western Art and native American artifacts.

His philosophy of life crystallized when reading Chief Seattle's 1854 impassioned appeal to the US Government for just treatment of his tribe. The native American chief implored reverence and respect for the land, pointing out the intangible bonds between living creatures, dead spirits and the surrounding inanimate objects, "silent witnesses to happy and sad events long vanished." This world view of harmonious living and interdependency are a driving force in Wade's wilderness areas, he absorbs creative energy to fashion his ar pieces.

Working iron is a true passion for Wade. Taught the rudimentaries of the cutting torch at five by his father, he shuttled around the West Coast as a young man creating sawmills from truckloads of metal stock. In the eighties, after his children were born, he settled in his grandfather's former clock making shop and ran a general repair and welding business, fixing specialized machinery, such as mechanized wood splitters, crafting sturdy wood stoves, and repairing helicopter blades.

During a period of slack workload, he decided to try his hand at decorative objects, putting his finely honed talents to the test. he never looked back and has since devoted all his time to creating a diverse range of Western Art pieces ranging from functional ranch signs and weather vanes to exquisite interior design objects featuring cowboys at work and play, ancient petroglyphs and wildlife scenes of the American West.

In his spare time, Wade shares his enthusiasm for frontier life with school children, cub scouts, and at community events and western gatherings. He takes his Old West trappings, his draft horses and wagon, portable blacksmithing hearth, teepee and various implements used by the hardy pioneers to give his audience a small taste of life then while telling stories of those days long gone.