Rebecca Weythman
Hello everyone, my name is Rebecca Weythman, and I am a local welded metal artist. I was born and raised in the beautiful Wenatchee Valley and have lived here all but three years of my forty-five years here on earth.
Fun fact (that my kids love), we are proud members of one of the founding families of Cashmere and Monitor. Perhaps, you have toured our family’s humble little cabin, found at the Cashmere Museum.
I have been gifted with a different learning style—Dyslexia—though it took “MANY” years for me to see it as a gift. Because of my Dyslexia, my mom chose to homeschool me along with my three younger siblings. I thank God for the Dyslexia because I believe that I would not be as creative without it and that is why I believe the Dyslexia is a gift—a gift from God. I also thank my mom for choosing to homeschool me because I would never have made it through a mainstream public school system, as there was almost nothing known about Dyslexia back then.
Growing up I loved being outdoors in nature, camping, hiking, biking, swimming in the rivers, and working in the yard with my mom. I also loved creating and building doll houses to tree houses. Doll clothes to my clothes, jewelry to handbags, ornaments to holiday wreaths. I loved mixing materials, glass with wood, paper with glass, metal and rock, etc. And I’m glad to say nothing has changed except for my skill level of course.
In 2010 I went back to school to increase my skill set in interior design and landscape architecture. One of the classes I took was a 3D modeling class, where you had your choice of working with any medium you wanted, so I chose metal as I had worked with almost every other material. At the time I figured it would be a great fit for my landscape architecture because then I could make my own arches, gates, and other yard accessories. After I aced that class, I was hooked, I wanted more—to know everything about welding. I proceeded to take all the welding classes WVC had to offer. I received the one-year welding certification, and I am certified in two welding processes—Bonus, I was the first female to complete the welding course at WVC. After 10 years I finally completed my journey at WVC with several degrees and certifications. Yes, I know 10 years seems like a long time, but my unique learning style makes it take a bit longer with bookwork stuff. During my time at WVC, I designed and created my largest sculpture to date “Pressures of Change” for a juried student art show. After the show, I was allowed to keep it on campus until I finished school—this was in 2018.
In 2020 when covid hit and as I was finishing up my last quarter, I scrambled to find a place for my sculpture. I contacted the board at Pybus Public Market, and they said they’d love to have it. Shortly after installing “Pressures of Change” at Pybus, an anonymous person bought it and donated it to Pybus. From this connection, I started selling my metal art at the Artisan Markets at Pybus. February of 2021, I made the exciting and scary leap to go full time creating and selling my one of a kind metal art pieces.
People ask me all the time where I get my materials, my reply is everywhere—scrapyards, second hand stores, yard sales, the side of the road and sometimes people will give me things. I strive to use as much recycled metal and other materials in my art pieces, giving new life to things once discarded.
The second thing people ask is, “where do you get your ideas”. My answer, from nature and inside my head.
At shows I love to step back and listen to people as they look over my art and discover/realize all the different items and details that I put in my art and watch the smiles it brings to their face.
I not only create my own art, but I also do custom orders, if you can think of it, there’s a very good chance I can bring it to life.
My first love is creating recycled metal art, but a close second is teaching others to weld while creating their own art.
My big dream is to find and purchase a few acres where I can live, work, display my art, and teach. I will have a large shop for creating my art, a second shop for teaching, an indoor gallery and an outdoor gallery. The galleries will be open to other local artists to show their art along with my own for a very low fee because I hate galleries that gouge and even steal from artists.