About

Bill Hodgson has had a lifelong interest in metal work. This translated into going to trade school for welding in his native PEI. After he finished the two-year course, he worked in a general shop for a year and then worked for a shipyard in Georgetown, PEI. However, after a year in the shipyard, he decided it wasn’t what he wanted to do for the rest of his life so he hooked up with a friend who had a “disco” set-up for school dances and ended up traveling around the East Coast creating/maintaining lighting rigs for bands on the road.

After five or six years of this, Hodgson turned his efforts to theatre, working at Theatre Calgary for two years. This was where he met his wife Andrea. In 1983, he and Andrea moved to Toronto, Ontario where he worked for Toronto Free Theatre as Technical Director/ Production Manager for five years. He then joined the stage hand union, IATSE local 58 and worked at The Canadian Opera, National Ballet and Canadian Stage Co. building scenery for the stage and on such large scale shows as Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables. In 1997, he and his young family moved to Ingersoll, Ontario so his wife could take a job at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.

At first Hodgson created pieces in his basement. As things got busier, however, he rented a shop for his blossoming business. Hodgson is now on his third shop and things have been busy enough for him to keep creating.

Although Hodgson is interested in doing his best when working on a piece in terms of craftsmanship and finishing, he resists the urge to make things ”perfect” or create perfectly symmetrical mass-produced pieces. Each piece he creates is unique and even when he gets an order to make a duplicate of a piece he has already created, he cannot exactly replicate the piece because each work is unique and the process he goes through in making each piece is always different.

Hodgson draws his inspiration for his pieces from organic forms and from his customer’s ideas or requests. Hodgson’s work transforms mild steel and wood into functional yet imaginative works.

Contact

	711 Central Ave London, Ontario
	519-670-0306
	billhodgson@sympatico.ca