I’m Doug Meyer; chief designer and builder of Rustbelt Rebirth.  The short version of my story goes like this: unable to afford art school I enrolled in the Job Corps welding program, graduating with a Combination Welder certification in ‘98.  Eleven years later I formed Rustbelt Rebirth as a company to produce limited-run steel furniture works.  The rest, as they say, is history.
    My works are mostly made from reclaimed sheet metal and tubular steel.  Hand-pulled bends are cut and formed into the frameworks.  What I buy as institutional desks, shelving, and cabinets at auctions and salvage supply stores is then cut up for it’s useful sheet metals.  I’ve pioneered a technique I call Segmenting during the building process, which makes use of all of the cut-off pieces elsewhere in the build, resulting in a patchwork effect on the sheet and something like bamboo on the tubular frame.  This process allows me to use 99% of my materials, but also visually reflects the holistic thinking of the entire process of reclamation.  Minor pings, dings, scratches, hole patterns, and rust all tell the story of a previous life, as I leave the color of the material as I find it, often preferring the material “ugly side up”. .