'Furnace Dreams' During Covid19

African Iron Smelting Furnace in the shape of a woman

One of the online assignments for Junior Foundry during Covid 19 was to Design a Dream Furnace. To start with we looked at historic furnaces from Ancient African Iron Smelters which are often personified to Abraham Darby's coke furnace in Ironbridge that addressed the fuel shortages of wood at the time of the Industrial Revolution. A furnace that melts metal can be a purely functional apparatus but it is also a magical apparatus of transformation, in early times it is where ritual and ceremony took place in order for a successful material transformation to be undertaken. In contemporary metal casting practices this still holds some resonance with many people and forces coming together for a pour bringing their energy and focus towards melting the metal. In some cases the furnace and the pour intentionally become a performance, on most occasions it is a well coordinated dance of sweat and logistics. Students were asked to consider type of material to be melted, fuel used, crew needed, site and occasion. 

Darby Furnace 1709 First Coke Fired Furnace, Ironbridge, UK

Autumn Maggi 'Plasma Trivection Kiln and Furnace' 

●     See through main crucible/kiln area

●     Fireplace for cooking and warmth

●     Digital temperature gage

●     Manual and Digital Controls

●     Can heat up most metals within 30 minutes

●     Wood and gas powered

●     Can be operated by two or less people

Misty Long-Donoho  'S'MoreChocolator'

Daniela Murphy  'Corona the Furnace' 

   

Corona the furnace is a safety proven modified trash can, insulated with refractory material and a temperature gauge to ensure the easy and accurate firing of various metals and pottery to its appropriate temps. It features a design that can handle both a crucible for the melting of metals or a platform for firing clay bodies. The furnace is equipped with a modified lid on which spikes are attached for the roasting of foods wrapped in foil. The lid will be minimally insulated for the purpose of utilizing the excess heat in order to cook the foods. 

Emily Bernier  'Its Time To Par-Tea' 

    

The teapot is the chamber that protects the furnace and is mostly there for show. When you open up the top of the teapot (the flame topper) you will see the furnace and you can grab your crucible to pour your metal. This furnace will melt aluminum only and will run on propane and the metal will be melted within a crucible made out of carbide graphite. The furnace goes up to 1250 degrees fahrenheit because that is the melting temperature for aluminum. The exterior is made of steel with 1” of fibrefrax ceramic wool to insulate the furnace as well as ceramic wool located on the cover of the furnace(not pictured). The bottom is made out of refractory cement and also has fire bricks. You will use the gas hose, propane and gas pressure regulator to heat the furnace safety! After we melt the hot metal into the crucible and pour it into our molds, we will all gather together and have a tea party!

 

John MacArthur  'Furnace Fantastic'

I want to be able to melt metal in my hands but this is the body I have created to do it for me.

Artzy Basheff 

 Adrienne 'Milo' Beebe  'Travelling Communities'

  

My furnace is named Travelling Communities, it is designed so that it can be taken apart into four pieces and reassembled on site. It’s an iron furnace. Originally it was created for bronze, but I realized that I want this furnace to be able to travel to communities that experienced hardship, and iron is more readily available. This is both a production and performance furnace. I would want to bring this bright furnace to areas that recently went through natural disasters, and invite locals to participate in an iron pour where they can:-

1. Make something functional

2. Make something sentimental

3. Throw in personal debris to charge the furnace.

It would therefore run on coke, limestone, iron, and whatever the locals wanted to through in (as long as it’s safe to burn eg. papers, wood, leaves…). Ideally, Travelling Communities would need four to five experienced metal workers, and the locals would fill in the rest. The more people that participate, the easier the work.

Anna Rasmussen 'Gnome Furnace'

 

This furnace is based on the Gnomes workshop, they have their own language and it would produce gnomes gold.

'Tara' 2007 National Casting Center Foundry 100# tap coke fired iron furnace

 Tara Thomas  'Birnace'

Birnace works like a Darby Furnace, and is positioned at the side of cliff for access to charging him via his beak. Birnace is thirteen-foot-tall furnace with a double-conical designed keeping heat in making him more fuel efficient. He is equipped with a “poop-shoot” to let out the molten metal into egg shape molds and used exclusively for melting copious amounts of gold.

Birnace exists in an alternate universe where there is a sole owner of all the gold in their world, due to the fact that he is a super-being and all the normal humans are allergic to gold. The super-being protects the other beings with technology advancements brought to them from the super-being’s home world, E-Ar-Th. Birnace may be made of metal but he does have a life of his own. He rests by the super-being’s side in a large nest. The normal-beings worship the super-being and Birnace for their abilities by bring them charges of gold and fuel throughout the day, careful to not touch any of gold that covers most of the plant.

Saymi Pinder  'Dragon Furnace'

UNMONUMENTAL MONUMENTATION by Noah Heyman

'Two views on Unmonumental Monumentation'

A monument is something erected in memory of or as enduring evidence of a person or an event of importance. Through this investigation I am interested in exploring the way people immortalizes these events of importance in their lives or the lives of the populous.

 

Traditionally monuments have been used to memorialize and immortalize events of greater importance. I am interested in the way one can monumentalize the unmonumental.

By shrinking the scale of these monuments, both physically and conceptually, an interesting juxtaposition is formed that brings value to the importance of individuals. Through the use of two distinct views on Unmonumental Monumentation I am curious to explore how this juxtaposition operates in different environments. 

 

'Ode to Adventure' is an earlier work it is the beginning of a one sided conversation discussing what living really is.

Each object represents for myself a time and a place. They each carry with themselves a heavy tale of how we met and where we are going. As I travel I am prone to seek out items to add to my collection as with each object I am in a sense adding to myself, creating a more lively narrative of my own life as well as that of the objects I stumble across. In my Ode to Adventure I have gathered objects that each tell a tale of exploration, be it in the literal sense or a more interpersonal one. This Ode is particularly interesting to me because each item within the collage can tell a different story for each person be it the comical and childish threat of a can of mace for one, or the very real intimidation felt by the same object for others. I am curious to continue to push this dialogue of alternative perspective as it truly says a lot about where each viewer comes from and possibly where they are going. An adventure does not always mean hopping a fence or running from the law, life is whatever you make of it. Why not make it an adventure?

Noah Heyman

Sculpture Foundry Fall 2016 @ Alfred

SUBCONSCIOUS INVESTIGATIONS by Jackie Fischer

My work is an investigation into my subconscious in hopes of capturing the fluidity I find myself submerged in. From a young age, I've been attracted to spherical, drippy, bulbous and organic forms. What this means exactly I'm unsure of, but will continue to explore this.

 

I'm captivated by the physical qualities existing within ceramic materials, it's malleability and the immediacy the material provides. Metal casting in many ways is quite similar to ceramics. Whether that from the tremendous possibilities obtainable through different processes, the uncertainty, or the vast amount of labor involved within each material. Within both materials each step presents a multitude of questions loaded with new insight, ideas and direction.

  

Working with Morgan Donohue, Visiting Moldmaker from Polich Tallix Foundry

 

My work changes and adapts due to a range in my emotional, spiritual and mental state at the time of construction. I remain open to the unexpected possibilities each material presents throughout the development of the work. Throughout the physical and chemical changes each material withholds I'm constantly provided with new information perpetually leading me to push the limitations of the materials.

  

'Identification'

Environment and interpersonal relationships help form this idea of identity. Identity is not a solid stable concept. Our perception of our world changes through new stimuli were exposed to daily. We’re constantly learning, growing and adapting. Whether we are fully conscious of these changes is another story. Although there are times I’ve stumbled upon new information which was enlightening and have felt somehow different than ever before. Despite the fact that Identity is a rather fluid and ever changing concept we somehow define ourselves within it. Perception is a huge part of it. How we perceive ourselves. How others perceive us. How we think others perceive us can be rather different. Our exterior appearance often gets used to identify. As does the experiences we share with those who we have relations with. In conversations between people often we’ll use descriptive language to describe a third party. In that language we find ourselves describing what would generally make that person stand out helping to identify that person, whether that be previous actions or encounters, hair, clothing style, glasses, eye color, accessories , etc. In the past two and a half years I’ve been identified in conversations as the girl with dreadlocks.

 

Personally I identified myself with them. They were a part of me I carried around for a substantial amount of time. Each one has a story behind it, process, creation, decoration and progress. Some made intentionally and others formed themselves over time. Alike many relationships I have.  All of the beads, bolts, trinkets and feathers were gifts from different encounters I’ve had among my travels across the states. Some made from friends while others gifted from strangers. A majority of the locks were snipped by those who I’ve shared or had impactful / life altering experiences with. Each lock is loaded with the experiences I’ve identified with for so long and now the experiences I’ve had with those who I identify with.

All work by Jackie Fischer in the Fall 2016 

Junior Foundry: National Casting Center Foundry @ Alfred

SELF by Hannah Hones

 

I delved into the body of work Self looking to explore my self identity, particularly within my body and how it relates to it. I chose to cast my body and the imprints or impact it makes in the world as well as the volume I take up within the world.

The first part of this journey was within Critiquing social constructions- bra and bare. In these two pieces I explored the quite literal way that society shapes women's bodies, and how that plays into beauty standards and self worth.

 

The second was Female Nipple as a response to the female nipple being considered pornographic on many social media platforms including those used for artwork such as Instagram.

 

 

Impact imprints was created for two separate reasons, the first wanting to cast my body without taking a literal body casting, and the second representing the internalized anger having to do with the shear amount of sexism, both intentional and non, that a woman faces when working in a predominantly male field such as metal working.

 

Figure: Form was cast to look at the body purely as a form, and how I relate to my body in a purely artistic since. Personal volume was cast to represent the physical space I take up in the world. As a woman, I often feel as though I should take up as little space as possible, to be small, quite, collected, and non-confrontational. As a response to this I cast the fullest parts of my body, those that hold the most volume, in iron to make a space for my body to be where it will not be shrunk or encroached upon.


Hannah Hones, Junior Foundry Fall 2016 National Casting Center Foundry @ Alfred