What is the Magic Forge?

Once upon a time, in Hollywood…

Gary Beck spent years in Hollywood making things explode for the movies. Eventually he'd had enough. He set off to find a place where he could make wild, wonderful art, and nothing else.

His story (and he sticks to it) is that he was wandering through Arizona when he found a fairy stuck in a tree. He calmed her down with a candy bar. They talked. Some mysterious contracts were signed in purple ink, a spell or two was cast — and the Magic Forge was born.

“To live… to live would be an awfully big adventure.”

Building it from scratch

The forge is being built by hand, out of the land itself. The Dragon presses adobe bricks from sand, straw, clay and water dug up on site, and every single brick is finished with a follower's name. A gift from a brickmaker called Future Adobe means he can now press seven bricks at a time instead of one.

The plan from here: the shop, then the first official art installation, then cinema-style art spread across 40 acres of Arizona. All of it from recycled and donated materials, all of it filmed live.

The skills he brings

• Hollywood special effects — explosions, props and making things look like something they aren't.
• Welding & fabrication — he works with fire.
• Mechanics — he grew up working on VW Beetles with his grandfather.
• Arbor work & citrus farming — because why not.

Life off-grid

The forge runs on donated generators and one solar panel hooked up to a battery. Water comes from a community well. Until something more permanent is built, home is a small Ghibli-style cabin.