Attempting to enrich yourself via arts classes can lead to serious disappointment, like when you learn that landscapes are actually hard, or when you learn that landscapes don't require the services of a nude model. But it can also lead to a spouse and a career, as it did with Girardini Design.

After a chance meeting at a Colorado pottery class, the craft-curious couple behind Virginia-based Girardini married, moved back east, and started art-ing full time; they now live to cut, polish, and weld beautifully clean, wickedly shaped clocks out of bronze and cold finished steel, a lower-carbon alternative to stainless you definitely don't want to handle after devastating a Costco bag of Cheetos. Large, wall-mounted masterpieces include "Big Bend", a two-faced, inverted triangle available in bronze or copper patina; "Double Circle", a simple bronze face bordered by two concentric steel rings; and a brand new, 3ft-tall "neo-classic" design inspired by Japanese-calligraphy and dubbed "Asian Arcs", which, in the event of biblical flood, would save two of every kind of dragon. For those who live in tents, they've also got freestanding tickers like the "Easel", with a brass face and concavely-arching frame; the "Owl", a small, horned piece; and a just-fabricated, pendulum-equipped steel-gridded rectangle set over black-stained wood, called "Matrix Mantel" -- listen deep within, and you'll hear the syncopated booming of the craziest, most inexplicable rave ever.

If you're all set with time, they've also got similarly impressive mirrors like the "Asia Wall" and the rugged "Glass Rock Console" -- set up your easel in front of one, and if your teacher won't provide a nude model, by god you'll provide your own.