Greg Meyerdirk grew up playing by the creek & lakeshore. As a child, his close experiences with nature helped to mold his love of nature and animals. Beginning with forts built of sticks & mud, his sculptures evolved. At the age of six, his coaster wagon was broken as he "crashed" at the bottom of a hill. His father, who was the son and nephew ofthe nearby town blacksmiths, laid the welder in his young hands and thus began the journey from sticks & mud to metal sculpting. His desire to work with metal has turned into a love affair with his daily occupation.
I am mostly a self-taught artist who fabricates by cutting, bending, & assembling some type of metal into a piece of art. I work with mild steel using common tools, like a plasma torch, roller, bender, welder, grinders & other tools. First etching the steel, I combine caustic acids, metal dyes & high-end automotive colors to create my unique finishes. I set myself apart from other fabricators of metal art with the dimension and layering of my pieces, as well as the patinas, or finishes. I am the fabricator as well as the color artist.

The Evolution of an Artist...
In the summer of 1995, Greg and his wife, Patrice decided to take Greg’s hobby and love of metal working to a new level.  He started creating new designs to take to local art festivals, calling his new company “The Test of Time” to symbolize the longevity of hand crafted metal art.
In the beginning, the designs were pretty simple, and driven primarily by customer requests.  Designs ranged from yard stakes and garden ornaments to heavy-duty indoor wall art. In the early days, traveling conditions for art festivals were cozy, to say the least. Greg & Patrice would travel to a show, set up the display booth, then escape into their modified cargo trailer for the night. Although they had a bed to sleep in, conditions weren’t ideal. They didn’t have any kind of running water, heat, or air conditioning, so the cargo trailer could get a little cramped on the weekends that were overly hot, unusually cold, or during the inevitable overnight rain storms.
Many things changed and improved in the years that followed. That cargo trailer was soon replaced by a much more comfortable horse trailer with living quarters. Designs changed and evolved. Each season, they would introduce several new pieces – often adding to existing collections, and other times creating all new lines, unrelated to anything prior. Show schedules evolved and changed, and even clientele changed as the business continued to grow.
In 2009, Greg & Patrice (Meyerdirk Art) decided it was time to extend their art festival season. As the frigid winter set in across Iowa, they headed south. They were off to Arizona and New Mexico to try the winter Art Festival Scene. With a horse trailer full of new, contemporary designs, an Old Black Lab named Sam in the backseat , and itch for a new adventure, they rolled into the Desert Southwest. It was great. They spent the next 2 winters adventuring with festivals before deciding on an area around Mesa to call Home all winter.
Greg and Patrice continue to venture the upper midwest all summer, participating in a variety of art festivals, then head back to the Phoenix/Mesa area for a winter festival circuit.