Photo Courtesy of painetworks.com
TUCUMCARI, N.M. -- Mesalands Community College may be a campus with fewer than 2,000 students, but to sculptors and other artists, the annual iron pour is the biggest event of the year.
Students in the Mesalands art department and professional sculptors alike gather in the New Mexico town every year to reunite and go through the process of pouring liquid-hot iron. According to the president of the college, the event benefits both the college and the town of Tucumcari.
"It benefits the college because our art program is continuing to grow and we're featured across the country through audio and documentaries because this is a very unique program," Dr. Mildred Lovato said. "There are only a few like it in the country."
So, how does the process of going from 3,000-degree liquid iron to a beautiful art sculpture work?
"We use scrap iron, we break it up, we melt it in a homemade furnace and then we cast it into bowls we make here," Alaska Foundry Owner and Sculptor Pat Garley stated. "It's a lot of fun. It's a little bit intense- you can kind of call it an extreme sport if you want. It's that same thrill. You know, you're doing something that's a little dangerous, but we still try to do it safely."
Once the iron is poured, it takes hours to dry. Artists use clay sculptures to shape the design they want. That in itself can take a considerable amount of time to do.
"I'm getting ready to make a mold," Sculpting Student and Artist Susan Stacy said. "This is casting wax and this is a clay, so I can change the mane and change the horse. I cut the neck, change the face."
The students and sculptors make just about anything, from furniture and home decor to tools and toys.
"If you visit the Mesalands Community College's Dinosaur Museum, you will see projects that they started here- poured the waxes, cleaned the waxes, inverted them into molds, then poured them," Mesalands Art Teacher D'Jean Jawrunner said. "It takes a lot of man hours to clean up. Often times, a cast sculpture is so expensive because of all the man time involved."
