Artists and Their Crafts


man in wheelchair wearing welders mask and gloves while welding in a garage
“What a nondisabled person does with their two hands and feet, I have to figure out with two nonworking hands,” says Hannaford.

Meet the Metal Man

Today Jeremy Hannaford is a successful welder with his own business, Jeremy’s Gimp Art and Welding. But in 2009, five years after he sustained a C6 spinal cord injury in a motocross accident, the flooring store he worked for closed, and he couldn’t buy his mom a birthday present.

He decided to weld her a metal daisy as a gift, even though welding didn’t go well the first time he attempted it post-injury. His dad had recently acquired a welder, and Hannaford tried it out. “It was terrible,” says Hannaford. Using the welder required pulling a trigger, which proved difficult with his quad hands. “My positioning was totally off, so I’m leaning way over in my chair trying to hold onto this thing and not fall out. I did a couple of little welds, and they looked like boogers all over the place.”

He felt defeated.

But having to come up with something for mom’s birthday makes desperate men do desperate things. So, Hannaford tried again. This time, he rolled under the table and put his elbows up, which provided enough stability for him to hold the welding gun with both hands. With his dad’s help, he pulled off some decent welds — cutting the flower out, grinding it clean and putting it all together.

“Mom absolutely loved it,” he says. “We have a close, big family, so everybody else who saw it was super impressed that I used the function I have to make something my mom could buy at the store. It motivated me to start messing around with junk metal.”

weld of rugby chair
Hannaford draws inspiration from all over, including his passion for
wheelchair rugby.

Messing around quickly became something more, and today Hannaford’s business plan is built on turning junk metal into art for paying customers. Among his many creations are wheelchair rugby and handcycle trophy toppers, name signs, shooting targets, BBQ tool hangers and furniture. The Bremerton, Washington, man even made a didgeridoo holder in the shape of Mount Rainier, the tallest mountain in his state. While he has always had a knack for drawing, when it comes to metalwork, he is completely self-taught, learning through countless welding videos on YouTube and good, old-fashioned trial and error.

“Right now, I have a fixture table, so I can put clamps inside of it and clamp down the pieces of metal I’m going to weld. Whether I’m using a TIG welder or a MIG welder, I’m able to take two pieces of metal and burn them together,” he says. “I’m probably one of very few TIG welders in the world that’s a quadriplegic.”

TIG, or tungsten inert gas, welding uses an electric-powered torch with a non-combustible tungsten electrode to create an arc between the base metal and the electrode. The torch pumps inert argon gas to protect the electrode while melting filler metal into the line it burns. That filler becomes part of the final project as the metal surfaces fuse together. A MIG, or metal inert gas, torch uses a feed wire instead of filler metal.

Typically, a TIG torch is powered with a pedal near the welder’s feet, but Hannaford’s is attached to the top of his welding table. He holds the torch in his right hand, the filler metal in his other hand and uses his left elbow to push the pedal.

“What a nondisabled person does with their two hands and feet, I have to figure out with two nonworking hands,” he says. Using old car parts and tools to create the ideas people have in mind is a slow, methodical process, but Hannaford is eternally grateful that his skill and passion allow him to make a living on his own terms. “[The creations] are definitely not big moneymakers. But they keep me busy, and people love art, so it kind of works out,” he says.

woman holding paint brush while displaying her painting
Schuh’s art ranges from the erotic “XXXtra White Chocolate” (below), to the more mundane “Almond” (above).

Food for Suggestive Thought

When Gina Schuh began posting her “Eat Me Collection” of paintings on Instagram, she received outraged comments along with compliments. The series depicts neon-colored food like strawberries, hot dogs and tacos dripping with goo and eaten or handled in sexually suggestive ways. She took the comments as a sign to keep creating and challenging the status quo.

multi colored painting of a strawberry dripping into an open mouth

“Why can a nondisabled woman post sexually suggestive content of themselves, maybe topless, and I can’t paint a cantaloupe with someone poking a finger in it without somebody getting offended? We’ve got to ask ourselves why that is,” says Schuh, a C5-6 quadriplegic from Mesa, Arizona.

It wasn’t just Instagram followers getting offended. A printer she’d already paid $1,000 refused to print her work because they said it was pornographic and embarrassing. Plus, her sister’s neighbor, an artist herself, admitted to Schuh that her art makes her uncomfortable.

“Part of me is cool with that,” she says. “I’m like, ‘You have to ask yourself why you’re uncomfortable with my cantaloupe.’ Besides, I want my art to make people feel things. Other people are excited by it, and they love it. As an artist, it couldn’t be more of a compliment for it to be controversial.”

Schuh wants a conversation about why so many people still have trouble wrapping their minds around the concept that disabled people have sex. She also knows that sex sells, and tackling such subject matter helps her popularity and grow an Instagram following.

Not bad for someone who took up painting during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I realized that my writing looked pretty nice since I was taking a lot of notes for school. When I wasn’t taking notes, I was doodling, and my doodles looked good, so I thought I’d give painting my first serious try since before my injury,” says Schuh.

female artist painting on canvas
“My life is very colorful, and I want that to be portrayed in my artwork,” says Schuh.

She discovered she doesn’t need adaptive equipment to get back to a professional standard. Instead, she adjusted her artistic technique to her post-injury capabilities.

“I used to do a lot of landscapes before I was injured, but now I don’t do so many because they take me three times as long. I also work a lot smaller than I used to because it’s easier for me to rotate the canvas,” she says. “Thankfully, I have a steady hand, so I just thread the brush through my fingers. I want to get into pinstriping wheelchairs in the future.”

If you look closely, you can see her paintings consist of several lines and deft use of negative space. The other elements that stand out are the extremely bright colors.

“Every artist wants their art to represent them. I’d like to think I’m a vibrant, outgoing, bright person. My life is very colorful, and I want that to be portrayed in my artwork,” she says. “People ask me where the inspiration for the Eat Me Collection comes from. Well, duh, it’s my two favorite things — sex and food.”

Crafty Treasure Maker

Carol Sendelbach is passionate about crafting. Since developing complex regional pain syndrome from surgery complications, she has tapped into that passion to find happiness and deal with the pain that comes from her disability.

She takes orders from her website or her Facebook Page, The Stylish Dragon Treasures. “I’m a workaholic who can’t sit and watch TV without doing something,” says the Auburn, California, woman. “That’s what brings me joy.” Her fiancée built a desk that’s high enough for her wheelchair to fit under and supplied her with rolling tables she could move in and out of the way to make it easier to do her crafts when she’s able.

woman in powerchair crafting at her desk
Sendelbach derives great pleasure from crafting her unique creations.

So, what does she make? The answer is anything that’s currently trending in the crafting world that she can pull off, including decorated acrylic shot glasses, resin-wrapped pens, pen stands and tools for other crafters who decorate pens.

“I’ve sold over 200 of my Pen Twist ‘n’ Stands that help other crafters decorate these pens. It’s hugely popular in the crafting world,” she says. “I belong to a lot of crafting groups, so I see what people are doing, and if I’m interested in it, I try it by studying a lot of YouTube videos.”

She also credits her business coach with helping her capitalize on those projects that are most likely to sell. As a result, Sendelbach has a small source of income and an important outlet to take her mind off her pain.

“Creatively and mentally, crafting takes me out of the moment as far as my pain and concentrating on what I cannot do,” she says. “It allows me to put a bubble around my pain because I want to get what I’m doing done.”


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2 Comments
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Radiodude23
Radiodude23
1 year ago

Keep on doing your thing!

Dereck
Dereck
1 year ago

Would love help for painting for quads paralyzed from the shoulders down. That would be definitely an article I hope for.