The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: Variety

Media Credit: RICHARD HAMM A group of iron sculptors from around the country pour molten iron into a mold to produce a piece of iron art at the South Thomas Street Art Complex Saturday during the annual Invitational Iron Pour sponsored by the University's sculpture department. The Invitational Iron Pour was a chance for sculpting students from around the nation to show their iron-sculpting skills. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: RICHARD HAMM Molten iron is poured into a cast during the University's sculpture department's Invitational Iron Pour at the South Thomas Street Art Complex Saturday. The molten iron reaches temperatures above 2,000 degrees. [Click to enlarge]

When lustrous and silvery soft iron, burning brightly at 2,800 degrees, comes in contact with water, the reaction is explosive.

But this didn't stop students and artists from schools including the University of Mississippi, Florida State University, the University of California and the University from carefully constructing more than 100 iron cast sculptures at the biannual Invitational Iron Pour, held at the Thomas Street Art Complex in on-and-off rain Saturday morning.

Cat Brantley, a student teacher and recent alumna from Decatur who stood on the sideline serving snacks and wearing a lime green shirt to remind people to wear safety glasses, compared the combustion to fireworks.

She said things would get interesting after the first furnace, or cupola, began to burn at about 11:30 a.m.

Her predictions came true as shooting streaks of sparks flew out of flames at the leather-clad participants as they carefully interacted with the abundant metal.

For safety reasons, the ground was covered with sand, and teams were given tasks such as shoveling and manning the tower above one of the two cupolas - the larger one named "Mother" and the smaller one, "Mother's Little Helper" after the mother of the creator, Jim "Jimbo" Buonaccorsi. His mother died while he was constructing the first cupola.

Jessica Cook, an archaeology graduate student from Summerville, served as part of the shovel crew.

"It's the kind of thing that will take your head off," she said, strapping on her yellow leather suit and helmet for protection.

The leather coverings that Cook, Buonaccorsi and the other artists wore had a personality of their own.

Some were tattooed in bright colors and designs, while Luke Graves, a senior sculpture student from Knoxville, Tenn., branded his suit with his surname in bold letters.

The molds, constructed from a silica-based sand mixture, were made in many different sizes, most of them small package-like casings, and others as large as a person, with Solo cup-shaped holes for pouring in the iron.

Two theater production students from Bradley University in Illinois made one mold each. Scot Bouillon made a sun, and Jessi Veverka made a goldfish.

Both were excited to see their creations pulled from the sand the next day.

While teams poured iron outside, shouting directions over the chink of the metal, Josh Revod, a University of Mississippi sculpture student, worked on his last-minute artwork with a small drill in the adjacent warehouse surrounded by industrial beats from a stereo.

He described his work as a Christian-inspired labyrinth, like the larger ones in England. His "religious spiritual thing" - inspired by his father, a hospital chaplain, who makes wooded labyrinths for patients - took five hours to make.

As for people with strict, traditional definitions of artwork, he said, "Art can be what you want it to be."

To demonstrate this point, he described an installation piece he made for an art class. He took a toilet, painted it florescent, surrounded it with caution tape and watched people react.

"It was fun to see people interact with my work," he said. "Some people walked over the tape, and other people didn't know what to make of it. But it's still art."

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