LOVELAND, Ohio — Leslie Daly spends hours in her garage hammering, bending, twisting and setting fire to pieces of steel.

“Sometimes, I'll sit here and do hundreds in a day,” she said.

She uses steel that would otherwise be scrapped, thrown away in a junk yard.

“It comes in 20-foot lengths, I cut it, polish it, and then weld it together,” she said.

She says things in nature inspire her to create.

“The Baobab Tree is neat because it’s kinda like an upside down tree; the bottom of the tree looks like the top,” she said.

She combines her inspirations with what she learned from years of designing and sculpting classes, and turns that steel into masterpieces.

Her art is for sale in small galleries in Cincinnati, but when there were no sales when COVID-19 hit, she had to change with the times to bring in a paycheck. So, she started making face masks — a very different kind of face mask.

“I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to create these faces that the face masks go on,” said Daly, “I will put vaseline on someone’s face and then I paint a silicone over their face. Takes about 20-30 minutes."

She puts on the finishing touches, puts the faces out to dry, and now has a different kind of art that will become a part of a traveling art exhibition.

It’ll feature the faces with actual face masks on them from around the world — another inspiration to turn into treasure.