I can’t help but think wow when watching this slide-show. I wonder as to what it is that, not only, makes me yearn to hold one and display one (or several), but what makes the locksmith yearn to embellish a tool of such simplicity. Walk through your hardware store and see only functionality; I just bought a padlock. Manuel Guerra sees a chance to extend the Garden of Genesis to metallurgy and locks. What if Creation were nothing but an embellishment? After all what need of Creation did God have? Was He incomplete—or so over-full and Creation His excess?

Some may argue that Guerra participates in a craft and not an art form. The distinction is a brewing debate; it is a bewildering mess. But why must we denude his embellishments and categorize it as a lesser form? Because it possesses utility? Are not both high art and craft an overflow of our own excesses and subsequently participatory in the very act of God’s creative excess? Let us keep these things in mind both as we take sides in the art/craft debate and as we create, ennoble or embellish even the most humble of things. Let us consider not just the engineering, but the spirituality of imbuing immeasurably beyond it.