VIDEO: Sculpture is a hot topic at art departments’ Iron Pour
Every spring, MSU Denver students and faculty transform melted, molten scrap metal into sculptured works of art.
Each spring, as the temperature starts climbing, Metropolitan State University of Denver students create some heat of their own, melting buckets of scrap metal into a fiery, molten artist’s tool.
The annual Iron Pour transforms a vacant patch outside MSU Denver’s Arts Building into an open-air sculpture studio. The event, a joint project between MSU Denver and CU Denver, is “a beast to set up,” said Marin Abell, associate professor of Sculpture and master of ceremonies for the pour.
“One of the most exciting things is going to the scrap yard,” Abell said, in a sentiment rarely expressed by MSU Denver faculty. He said a couple of Denver scrap yards that allow people to treasure hunt in them. Abell and his students scour the scrap yards for the greatest “treasures” — metals that shatter easily, like old radiators and black pipes.
The collected scrap is smashed and melted down, and on pour day becomes molten liquid. Then, faculty and students in protective gear use giant ladles to carefully tip a bucketful of what looks like molten lava onto the metal molds students have created.
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Students typically use clay models, items picked up at a thrift store or even natural objects. One student, Fae Berry, used golden pothos leaves. They hope eventually to cast them in bronze, “and then I would like to forge that altogether onto a stem.”
Berry said they have learned a lot in Abell’s Sculpture for Non-Arts Majors class. “We started with some woodworking; I’ve done some welding. Right now, I’m learning a lot about, like, how casting and lost-wax casting work.”
The day after the pour, with the molten beast tamed and cooled, students remove the sculptures from the casts, and the year’s Iron Pour artworks are unveiled.
