***“I am always intrigued by an artist’s creative process, and that was why putting this challenge to our guild was so exciting to me,”***
Same here, but I did it for a living! In a Steel shop building electrical transmission towers, flood control gates, glycol reboilers, oil crackers, still columns, grain bins, stands for coal crushers.
One local “artist” took a piece of I beam, cut through one side and the web, bent it to a 45 degree shape, spray painted it and entered it in an art contest at a major art gallery.
The judges slobbered over how “original” it was.
I had been doing that for years, 500 at a time, in the shop, covering them with galvanizing, but no one slobbered over my work or ever called it art.
Now I blacksmith for fun.
You just needed better PR.