A recent Delcambre High School graduate is defeating the odds while tapping into the world of entrepreneurship. He’s using his disorder to show others that there’s beauty in what seems like a pile of junk. 

This is more than just defeating the odds. It’s breaking barriers for those with Aspersers. A disorder that didn’t stop this young man from accomplishing the extraordinary.

“I wasn’t the strongest. I wasn’t the fastest, but when I saw those heroes I thought maybe I can be like that one day,” said Brad Crittenden. He always had a love for figures and superheroes and the concept of having incredible capabilities. 

“Asperger’s people, we tend to keep our emotions bottled up.  If you push us a little too hard, then we go nuclear,” he said. He believes his superpower is the ability to turn aggression and emotion into creativity by welding junk metal into art. 

“This one has a nice little chain module right here and the side of the heads has pistons and gears,” he described the different pieces displayed inside his mother’s art studio. 

After graduating valedictorian of his high school class, he picked up welding ass a hobby. “I never been one of those cubicle type of people,” said Crittenden.

He beleives the typical career route was not for him so they launched his own business called B. A. M. or Brad’s Art and Metal. 

“Welding kind of help with my hand fidgeting” Technique, focus,  and coordination is what he’s gained the past nine months of developing his art. 

What’s seen by some as discarded pieces of uselessness he said, like Asperser’s, he finds beauty and purpose in it all.

“We’ll I’m defintely not like saving a damsel in distress or anything, but I am putting a smile on people’s faces. I am giving them nice pieces that can put around their lawns or homes and make their house look pretty,” he added. 

He creates three to four new peices a week. B. A. M. is located at 8001 Highway 14 in New Iberia. 

For more information visit, B. A. M.