by Drew Martin
In the late 1990s my wife was working on a degree at a local college so I decided to take a sculpture class at her school. I was not expecting much out of the course but it sounded interesting as it was an introduction to welding and iron casting. When I studied art at my university, there was not much focus on traditional sculpture so I was eager to learn some technical skills.
I recently found some old 35mm slides of the pictures I took during our iron pour so I had a few of them digitally scanned. The picture above is of fellow students pouring the molten iron into my cast for a stool I designed and made (pictured left).
I first carved the stool from strips of styrofoam and stuck them together with toothpicks and glue. I also made two large entry spouts from foam, which were connected to the bottom ring and four thin foam exhaust vents that rose up off of each corner. All of these needed to be sawed off later, which was a feat because they were also replaced by iron. This model was packed into a cardboard box with over 600 pounds of sand with a binder. The iron was poured onto/into the foam spouts until it came out the exhausts. Iron melts at approximately 2500 °F (1370 °C) so the foam instantly vaporizes and the liquid metal fills the gaps in the sand. My instructor was a little bit skeptical about the piece working because of its thinness and all the routes the iron would need to flow through in a couple seconds but despite a little distortion of all the weight and pressure of the sand on such a fragile foam, it was a great success. Seeing the pictures again brought back fond memories of the class, classmates and especially the professor, Jay Wholley, so I recently reached out to him and asked him for an interview, which we did through email.
In the late 1990s my wife was working on a degree at a local college so I decided to take a sculpture class at her school. I was not expecting much out of the course but it sounded interesting as it was an introduction to welding and iron casting. When I studied art at my university, there was not much focus on traditional sculpture so I was eager to learn some technical skills.
I recently found some old 35mm slides of the pictures I took during our iron pour so I had a few of them digitally scanned. The picture above is of fellow students pouring the molten iron into my cast for a stool I designed and made (pictured left).
I first carved the stool from strips of styrofoam and stuck them together with toothpicks and glue. I also made two large entry spouts from foam, which were connected to the bottom ring and four thin foam exhaust vents that rose up off of each corner. All of these needed to be sawed off later, which was a feat because they were also replaced by iron. This model was packed into a cardboard box with over 600 pounds of sand with a binder. The iron was poured onto/into the foam spouts until it came out the exhausts. Iron melts at approximately 2500 °F (1370 °C) so the foam instantly vaporizes and the liquid metal fills the gaps in the sand. My instructor was a little bit skeptical about the piece working because of its thinness and all the routes the iron would need to flow through in a couple seconds but despite a little distortion of all the weight and pressure of the sand on such a fragile foam, it was a great success. Seeing the pictures again brought back fond memories of the class, classmates and especially the professor, Jay Wholley, so I recently reached out to him and asked him for an interview, which we did through email.
Drew:
A dozen years ago I took your sculpture class, which was highlighted by an iron pour. It was really great because, to begin with, it is part of the geology and the history of that region. You also made us break up old radiators to get our iron source and then we were all part of the process. I was the bot plug guy. [the person who removes the bottom plug from the furnace in order to remove the molten metal]
How often do you do the iron pours now and what do you still like about that process?
Jay:
We usually do iron pours at Ramapo College once a semester. There are several things I like about the process. I like the idea that in these times of "high tech" I use a low tech, 19th century technology. Iron has only been used in fine art since the late 50's and had, until that time, been considered a base metal - appropriate for bridges and machinery but inappropriate for sculpture. It was kind of subversive in the beginning but like everything in our culture it was co-opted and is now everywhere. It is often used by people more enamored with the process than the art it is supposed to produce.
Drew:
As I recall, you were originally a steel welder, building bridges. Any particular bridges to note that I may have driven or taken a train over?
Jay:
The bridges that I worked on were mostly overpasses in the Boston Area - Route 95 on the way to New Hampshire although I did work on the railings on the Mystic bridge out of Boston. I also welded barges standing in the water in Boston Harbor - something only an 18 year old who was low on the evolutionary scale would do.
Drew:
How did you make that transition from a specialized laborer to full time artist? Was it a frightening move or something you were 100% sure about?
Jay:
I never intended to be a welder (as a profession) but rather did it summers and when I dropped out of school to make money. The company that I worked for did all the horrible jobs that the union refused. Once I was back in college I was completely committed to becoming an artist and knew that I would do anything that I had to do to support myself. After I left college I did the heavy lifting and installations for a large gallery in NY.
Drew:
I remember you wanted to get a fairly large piece made in bronze at the time. Did that ever get realized? I think you said the cost of casting bronze was $60/lb.
Jay:
Although I didn't get that particular piece realized (you have a good memory), I did get a commission for a large scale bronze piece from the Atlantic Foundation which is at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ and called "La Casa De Bernada Alba." I made the pattern and all of the fabrication and the casting was done by the Johnson Atelier. The cost would have worked out to about what you remembered.
Drew:
In your class you also taught us welding and we had some more conceptual assignments. How has your own work changed since then...have you become more conceptual?
Jay:
I feel that there have always been conceptual underpinnings or at the least "real world" associations in my work - even the work that overtly seems to be the most abstract. I am currently working on a series of large iron hats based on the hats in Piero della Francesca's paintings from the early Renaissance.
Drew:
Have students changed over the years? Are certain expressions lost or revived...or is there a new vision?
Jay:
That is a tough question. Are they more creative - no, more imaginative - no, but the vision has definitely changed. It could not help but do so as the culture changes. Students now seem to be more conservative and career oriented. Fortunately, there always seem to be a few iconoclasts ready to challenge me and everything else.
Drew:
I remember you telling me I should drink milk after welding galvanized steel because it absorbed metal from the blood. Welding and casting both have immediate and long term dangers. Can you talk a bit about living with those dangers as an artist?
Jay:
I am a lot more aware of the dangers now than I was years ago. I was always concerned with the safety of my students; less so with myself. Over time, as I have seen more accidents with friends of mine, I have become more cautious and I now practice what I preach and I hope that I will live a long and happy life doing what I love - making art using the processes of welding and casting. The College is also aware of the dangers in these areas and has made sure that everything that I do complies with industry safety standards. We have air handlers fans, etc. in the welding studio and the bronze casting furnace and burn-out kiln have high pressure, low pressure gauges on the gas lines as well fire-eye switches and over temperature controls.
Drew:
Can you share an image of your recent and or favorite work with us and tell us a little bit about it?
Jay:
I mentioned before the Piero "hats" but these are just out of the oven, so to speak, so I have attached one of my iron cubes called "Lament for Bobby Sands" which I cast at the Keane foundry in Houston, Texas. The piece is 3' square and weighs one and a half tons. I have been working on the cube series for over 12 years. I began making them in response to minimalism and Tony Smith's piece called "Die." Whereas he attempted to take all reference out of his piece I did the opposite with both process and connotation. The process mimics earth processes in the center of the Earth, or at least what geophysicists believe happens there. Plate shift gaps or "molds" are created and iron rushes in filling the void. This process is not dissimilar to what happens in a mold. I subvert the more normal casting processes to create fissures and occlusions in the surface. I have broken and abraded the surfaces to mimic what happens to iron if it is put back into the earth. The iron will disintegrate differentially due to how the crystalline structure sets up as it cools. This seems to be different in most pieces (at least with the processes that I use). The cube is also the building block of civilizations. I will leave it at that for now.
Drew:
Thank you for your time.
Jay's mention of Piero della Francesca reminded me of a comment he made during our class. As I recall, a student had asked him who his favorite painter was and he offered Piero. He said he liked him because his paintings were so sculptural. Since that comment I have always tried to appreciate how a sculptor, writer or filmmaker might see a painting, and for that matter, how a sculptor might have a certain reading of books, or how a painter would appreciate a film differently than a writer.
Apparently iron pours have quite a draw on certain characters. If I remember correctly, Jay and some students even went to Estonia for one and during our own iron pour, the sculptor George Segal (1924-2000) pulled up in a car and had a look. I read up on him yesterday and realized what an interesting person he was. From the 1950s on, he lived on a chicken farm in New Jersey where he hosted parties for the New York art world, which inspired the painter Allan Kaprow to coin the phrase "Happening." I first saw his work at the NY Port Authority Bus Terminal as a kid: his ghostly sculptures were simply part of the landscape for me. What is fascinating about them is the way they play on the term "cast" as his pieces were originally made with the gauze and plaster materials used for making casts on broken limbs. The use of these materials makes the process both medical and caring but the final pieces now read to me as something very painful about the human condition...that we are all perhaps broken inside and need to be in a cast until we heal.
A dozen years ago I took your sculpture class, which was highlighted by an iron pour. It was really great because, to begin with, it is part of the geology and the history of that region. You also made us break up old radiators to get our iron source and then we were all part of the process. I was the bot plug guy. [the person who removes the bottom plug from the furnace in order to remove the molten metal]
How often do you do the iron pours now and what do you still like about that process?
Jay:
We usually do iron pours at Ramapo College once a semester. There are several things I like about the process. I like the idea that in these times of "high tech" I use a low tech, 19th century technology. Iron has only been used in fine art since the late 50's and had, until that time, been considered a base metal - appropriate for bridges and machinery but inappropriate for sculpture. It was kind of subversive in the beginning but like everything in our culture it was co-opted and is now everywhere. It is often used by people more enamored with the process than the art it is supposed to produce.Drew:
As I recall, you were originally a steel welder, building bridges. Any particular bridges to note that I may have driven or taken a train over?
Jay:
The bridges that I worked on were mostly overpasses in the Boston Area - Route 95 on the way to New Hampshire although I did work on the railings on the Mystic bridge out of Boston. I also welded barges standing in the water in Boston Harbor - something only an 18 year old who was low on the evolutionary scale would do.
Drew:
How did you make that transition from a specialized laborer to full time artist? Was it a frightening move or something you were 100% sure about?
Jay:
I never intended to be a welder (as a profession) but rather did it summers and when I dropped out of school to make money. The company that I worked for did all the horrible jobs that the union refused. Once I was back in college I was completely committed to becoming an artist and knew that I would do anything that I had to do to support myself. After I left college I did the heavy lifting and installations for a large gallery in NY.
Drew:
I remember you wanted to get a fairly large piece made in bronze at the time. Did that ever get realized? I think you said the cost of casting bronze was $60/lb.
Jay:
Although I didn't get that particular piece realized (you have a good memory), I did get a commission for a large scale bronze piece from the Atlantic Foundation which is at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ and called "La Casa De Bernada Alba." I made the pattern and all of the fabrication and the casting was done by the Johnson Atelier. The cost would have worked out to about what you remembered.
Drew:
In your class you also taught us welding and we had some more conceptual assignments. How has your own work changed since then...have you become more conceptual?
Jay:
I feel that there have always been conceptual underpinnings or at the least "real world" associations in my work - even the work that overtly seems to be the most abstract. I am currently working on a series of large iron hats based on the hats in Piero della Francesca's paintings from the early Renaissance.
Drew:Have students changed over the years? Are certain expressions lost or revived...or is there a new vision?
Jay:
That is a tough question. Are they more creative - no, more imaginative - no, but the vision has definitely changed. It could not help but do so as the culture changes. Students now seem to be more conservative and career oriented. Fortunately, there always seem to be a few iconoclasts ready to challenge me and everything else.
Drew:
I remember you telling me I should drink milk after welding galvanized steel because it absorbed metal from the blood. Welding and casting both have immediate and long term dangers. Can you talk a bit about living with those dangers as an artist?
Jay:
I am a lot more aware of the dangers now than I was years ago. I was always concerned with the safety of my students; less so with myself. Over time, as I have seen more accidents with friends of mine, I have become more cautious and I now practice what I preach and I hope that I will live a long and happy life doing what I love - making art using the processes of welding and casting. The College is also aware of the dangers in these areas and has made sure that everything that I do complies with industry safety standards. We have air handlers fans, etc. in the welding studio and the bronze casting furnace and burn-out kiln have high pressure, low pressure gauges on the gas lines as well fire-eye switches and over temperature controls.
Drew:
Can you share an image of your recent and or favorite work with us and tell us a little bit about it?
Jay:I mentioned before the Piero "hats" but these are just out of the oven, so to speak, so I have attached one of my iron cubes called "Lament for Bobby Sands" which I cast at the Keane foundry in Houston, Texas. The piece is 3' square and weighs one and a half tons. I have been working on the cube series for over 12 years. I began making them in response to minimalism and Tony Smith's piece called "Die." Whereas he attempted to take all reference out of his piece I did the opposite with both process and connotation. The process mimics earth processes in the center of the Earth, or at least what geophysicists believe happens there. Plate shift gaps or "molds" are created and iron rushes in filling the void. This process is not dissimilar to what happens in a mold. I subvert the more normal casting processes to create fissures and occlusions in the surface. I have broken and abraded the surfaces to mimic what happens to iron if it is put back into the earth. The iron will disintegrate differentially due to how the crystalline structure sets up as it cools. This seems to be different in most pieces (at least with the processes that I use). The cube is also the building block of civilizations. I will leave it at that for now.
Drew:
Thank you for your time.
Jay's mention of Piero della Francesca reminded me of a comment he made during our class. As I recall, a student had asked him who his favorite painter was and he offered Piero. He said he liked him because his paintings were so sculptural. Since that comment I have always tried to appreciate how a sculptor, writer or filmmaker might see a painting, and for that matter, how a sculptor might have a certain reading of books, or how a painter would appreciate a film differently than a writer.
Apparently iron pours have quite a draw on certain characters. If I remember correctly, Jay and some students even went to Estonia for one and during our own iron pour, the sculptor George Segal (1924-2000) pulled up in a car and had a look. I read up on him yesterday and realized what an interesting person he was. From the 1950s on, he lived on a chicken farm in New Jersey where he hosted parties for the New York art world, which inspired the painter Allan Kaprow to coin the phrase "Happening." I first saw his work at the NY Port Authority Bus Terminal as a kid: his ghostly sculptures were simply part of the landscape for me. What is fascinating about them is the way they play on the term "cast" as his pieces were originally made with the gauze and plaster materials used for making casts on broken limbs. The use of these materials makes the process both medical and caring but the final pieces now read to me as something very painful about the human condition...that we are all perhaps broken inside and need to be in a cast until we heal.