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Last Updated: Oct 16th, 2008 - 13:33:17 |
Auraria students smashed two bathtubs to bits and campus police didn't care. In fact, UCD art instructors urged pupils to whack them harder.
Hundreds of pounds of broken iron scrap were needed for the iron pour at 4 p.m. on Aug. 14, when students in bronze sculpture, kinetic sculpture and wood and metal sculpture classes made their own pieces on campus.
Thirteen students and professors clad in leather and a silver, flame-retardant fabric labored to ready the molds and metal on a sandy site near the Emmanuel Art Gallery. Alternating bags, or "charges", of 35 pounds of iron and 7 pounds of coke -- a fuel from carbon residue -- were dumped into a furnace 6 feet high and heated until orange-red flames shot out the top.
Metro students and alumni participated in the event.
It's a very communal thing, explained Rian Kerrane, an assistant professor of sculpture for UCD. The visual arts department tries to have the pours at venues "where there are audiences," she said. The next one will be on Sept. 26 at the Denver Art Museum.
Experienced workers taught beginners the ropes as they manned posts and got ready to fill the castings they'd made in hardening sand.
"The iron pour is one of the better art experiences that this university has to offer its students," UCD 3-D animation major Chris Kerendian commented. He's a veteran of the pours, and said that bronze castings are done at a different time in the art labs foundry. The lab is shared with Metro students so everyone can take advantage of the equipment.
Meanwhile, the iron was nearly ready and a student stuck a metal tool that skims slag, or impurities, from the surface of the bubbling liquid in the flames above. Kerendian explained that if the tool was used at air temperature it would shatter in the swirling iron.
The molten iron came out a cylindrical half-tube leading from the furnace and was directed into molds that students shuffled about to collect the metal. The furnace was emptied completely. "This (furnace) is a whole new contraption," Kerendian said. "The other one had iron solidify in it."
Built by UCD students David Horner and Alex Scott in June, the furnace, or cupola, didn't perform up to its previous level for this pour and only a few sculptures were made. Nicknamed "006" or "The Squid", it has six hoses which blow air into its center to oxidize and harden the iron.
"It's a very subtle process," Kerrane said.
Look for some of the new sculptures on display in the art building on campus.
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