Mike Hill's art meltdown - Wayne-Wilson News Leader, Fremont, NC

When he began studying art at East Carolina University, Michael had every intention of focusing his studies on painting and drawing. But a survey course changed his mind on that.

While taking a cultural art survey course about three years ago, Michael and his class studied sculpture. On Halloween, the class participated in the department's annual iron pour. An iron pour is when metal, usually scrap iron, is melted down and cast into molds to create sculptures.

During the pour, Michael said he came prepared to simply watch the process with other students. But when he got there, he was offered a chance to help create the sculpture.

“I didn’t have any of the stuff you need to do an iron pour; I didn’t even have a pair of steel toed boots yet. When I got there, my professor asked me where my steel-toed boots were, and I told him I didn’t have any,” he said. “He told me to go get some.”

So Michael found a pair of boots, and borrowed someone’s leathers for full-body protection, and went over to work with the furnace. Michael assisted in heating the iron to an excess of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to create a sculpture.

“I guess you could say I was kind of thrown into it,” he said. But from then on, he said he was hooked.

After this initial pour, Michael became more and more interested in the art form, and traveled to participate in iron pours. He went as far as Georgia, Maryland, and Indiana to participate in the events, and along the way, became interested in building the furnaces that heat the metal.

He took an independent study course in which he and a professor built a new, larger furnace for the ECU art department to use for its iron pours.

“A handful of other students chipped in towards the end,” he said. “And it ran really well when we finished it.”

After the larger furnace was built, the college donated the old furnace to Oklahoma University for their sculpture program.

“They had a sculpture program, but they hadn’t done scrap metal,” Michael said.

Participation in assembling the furnace for ECU gave Michael the confidence that he could build a furnace on his own. Over the past year, he has worked on creating a furnace that will be put to use this week at Johnston Community College – but it won’t be staying there.

Michael built this furnace to travel with. He wants to take the furnace to various campuses to show students how easily they can incorporate scrap metal projects into their classes.

“It shows how you can adapt the process to various situations,” Michael said. “The materials are readily available, and it’s easy to incorporate into existing programs.”

The iron pour he will do at JCC this week will be part class, part demonstration, and part participation.

Students from ECU will travel with Michael to instruct the students in the morning on how to operate the furnace and the methods for casting the statue. Then they will see how the process works, and will have the chance to work with the students to create their own piece of art they can take home with them.

The metal that will be used in this pour comes from 10 old cast iron bathtubs, donated to the program by a salvage lot in Eureka, that have been broken down into pieces Michael describes as “about half the size of a Dorito.” The pieces will then be heated to a temperature between 2,200 and 2,700 degrees and cast into molds.

But aside from the aesthetic of the pieces that are created through iron pours, Michael said he really is drawn to the teamwork that it takes to make a piece.

“It takes at least 10 people to run the furnace properly, so it’s really a group effort,” he said.

The process of learning is also a cyclical group process.

“The group will usually get someone new to tag along and learn the process, so you get new people involved,” he said.

He added that some consider iron pouring a dying art, because it is a very old method that can be used for anything from functional items to masterpieces.

“It’s very fluid and detailed work, but it doesn’t have to be for art,” he said. “That’s just the way we choose to use it.”

Michael will graduate from ECU in the spring, but says that he plans to continue traveling with his furnace, which he named Nadia, for a long time.

“I named it Nadia, which is my girlfriend's middle name, because it means hope,” he said. “And I hope that people will continue to see what they can do with scrap metal.”

As for the future, his plans aren’t definite. Michael may continue on to graduate school, or he may start working in an iron casting facility. But either way, he and Nadia will continue to spread their art form to other schools and students, perhaps pulling other intended painters into the world of sculpture.

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Issue of 29 November 2007

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