Dozens gather to practice heavy metal at museum

WASILLA — It’s the hottest social event of the summer season, the fourth annual Valley Arts Alliance Art on Fire Iron Pour Art Fest at the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry.

Palmer artist Pat Garley, who owns a studio called Arctic Fires Bronze in Palmer, and friends came up with the idea and approached Carmen Summerfield with the Valley Arts Alliance.

So they organized an iron pour and invited other artists whose mediums depend on fire to demonstrate their arts, too.

At Saturday’s fourth annual event, artists from as far away as Texas and New Mexico traveled to the Mat-Su Borough to recycle bits of scrap metal into new, superheated works of cast iron art.

Association of Alaskan Blacksmiths offered blacksmithing demonstrations, Karen Lopez, who owns Still Waters Pottery in Palmer, did Raku pottery demonstrations and Sahara Storm Tribal Dance Troupe juggled fire and showcased other forms of movement.

Summerfield said she also invited the Alaska Wildbird Rehabilitation Center from Houston as a compliment to the museum’s newly acquired Breeden Barn.

“Every barn needs a barn owl, so we invited the rehabilitation center, too,” she said.

But the iron pour was the main event.

Skilled foundry workers such as Donnie Keen, who got his first job in a foundry when he was 7, were on hand early Saturday to start the furnace so it could begin heating up to the required 3,000 degrees, which takes a couple of hours, he said.

Keen owns a commercial foundry in Houston, Texas, and travels to Alaska for Garley’s pour. Garley said he traveled to Texas in March for Keen’s pour, and he’s next headed to the Kenai Peninsula next for a pour at Scott Hamman’s place. Hamman made the furnace in use at Saturday’s iron pour.

“I’ve made the best friends of my life pouring,” Garley said. “Iron is what we do for fun.”

That he works in this art form is something of an accident, according to D’jean Jawrunner, who teaches at Mesa Lands Community College in New Mexico. She met Garley years ago when he and his son toured her school’s foundry.

“Oh my son would love this,” Garley said.

But Jawrunner said she recognized the look in his eye. “I looked at him and thought, ‘You’ll be back.’”

For Garley, he said the attraction is primal.

“She couldn’t get rid of me. It’s all I wanted to do,” he said of the class he took from Jawrunner all those years ago.

Now Garley’s the teacher. The iron pour Saturday was the culmination of workshops on metal casting and mold making he taught at his Palmer studio.

There students filled wooden frames with a mixture of Knik River sand and epoxy to create a material that would hold the shape of the items to be cast. It’s the sand used in this part of the process that gives cast iron its telltale finish, Garley said.

Summerfield said some artists Saturday also chose to use the lost-wax casting process, which produces a smoother, more detailed surface.

When the furnace reaches its desired temperature, Garley, Jawrunner, Keen and the rest put on leather welding gear over their street clothes for an added layer of protection.

On top of that bed of red-hot coals, foundry workers add buckets of ground coal, or coke, and pieces of scrap iron. Then the propane blower is turned on and the coals are superheated, Garley said.

As the metal heats and melts, the impurities melt out first and drip out the slag hole in what looks like a lava flow. Next, the red-hot iron flows out, is collected and poured into the waiting molds.

“There is enough danger in it to keep it exciting,” Garley said.

For more information, visit valleyartsalliance.com.

Contact Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.