Jack Brubaker has been a full-time artist-blacksmith since 1970. He has exhibited extensively in North America and in Europe. Jack has demonstrated for both the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America (ABANA) and the British Artist Blacksmith Association (BABA), He has presented a slide lecture on his work at the First World Congress of Artist Blacksmiths in Aachen, Germany. In 1984 he served ABANA as president and has been on the boards of various national and local arts organizations. His kinetic sculpture was included in the Friedrichshafen Exhibition of Forged Sculpture in Germany. Jack’s work is in many collections, including those of Joseph Hirshhorn, Ali McGraw, and others.

Jack holds BFA and MFA degrees in art from Syracuse and Indiana Universities where he studied painting, printmaking, photography, and art history. As a child, he studied at The Art Institute of Chicago. However, his most important education came from within his family. He began studying oil painting and drawing at the age of five with his grandmother, Mary Brubaker, a respected Chicago painter. His great-aunt Edith Keith was a bowl-turner and painter, and his aunt Miriam McGrew was a painter and silversmith. Jack grew up in his grandfather’s and father’s wood and metal shops, watching them create useful objects that grew out of a basic belief that they could invent and build better goods than were available in stores. Their interest in designing new ways of doing things continues in Jack’s forge where he builds many of his own tools and machines.