The Conference
This National Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art and Practices is a biennial convergence of students, educators, academics, and professionals dedicated to exploring and advancing cast iron as an art medium. Support from this conference helps the Metal Arts Program at Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark preserve the history and knowledge integral to working with cast iron processes. In turn, Sloss Metal Arts provides opportunities that propagate and expand technical, aesthetic, and conceptual issues pertinent to our discipline. Collectively, this National Conference and Sloss Metal Arts create a magnetic field that helps hold our community together.
IRON WORKS
WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER
Historically, neighborhoods were created around ironworks, industrial spaces responsible for iron production. People were not only dependent on the job that was provided by the ironworks, but also the programs, support, and community that were centered around the material. At Sloss Furnaces National Historical Landmark, iron casting has transformed from a large-scale, industrial operation, to a smaller, education-based model, yet the community that has been built around the material has remained.
It is within this community and at this conference that we find the ability to “work smarter, not harder.” Working in this manner doesn’t negate the effort, skill, or dedication put into a task or goal, nor is it about cutting corners. It could mean something different for everyone. Perhaps it’s about being more efficient in your labor, prioritizing and delegating tasks. Or it could be employing new technologies, methods, or processes to maximize time or minimize physical exertion. Maybe it is about leaning on your community to share the labor or their experience.
It is our hope that the programming at the 2027 NCCCIAP connects you with a community of iron casters and artists that you can call on for knowledge, expertise, inspiration, or to just lighten the load.
Sloss Furnaces:
Birmingham's Smelting Pot
By Ty Malugani, Sloss Furnaces Historian
Birmingham was built on the potential and promise of the iron ore, limestone, and coal found in the area. Industrial companies unearthed these ingredients to turn them into iron and steel. While Birmingham had all the natural resources needed to make iron, the one missing element was people. In order to make good on the promise of the abundant natural resources, industrial companies needed to entice thousands of workers from the rural areas of the South as well as immigrants seeking a better life to make Birmingham their new home. As a young city with little infrastructure, industrial companies began building affordable housing communities to encourage employment at their facilities. This also gave the companies power and control over their workforces.
While industrial companies controlled almost the entire lives of their workforce from groceries to healthcare, one aspect they could not control was the community that was formed among the workers and their families. Like the ironworks that dominated Birmingham's skyline and economy, Birmingham's culture came from a mix of ingredients. Instead of iron ore, limestone, and coal, however, these ingredients were religion, architecture, food, and music. Birmingham's ironworks were built to produce a commodity that could make the operators and city money. Ultimately, a much more important commodity came out of the furnaces: communities forged by hard work, perseverance, determination, and resilience all while facing difficult and often oppressive environments. Ironworks did not just produce Birmingham's iron, they also produced Birmingham's soul through the people who made the city and its industry possible.
Sloss Metal Arts
Sloss Furnaces is a 32-acre blast furnace plant where iron was made from 1882 to 1971, when the plant was closed due to obsolescence. Reopened in 1983 as a museum and national historic landmark, Sloss sponsors an active arts program that focuses on metal sculpture. This metal arts program is rooted in Birmingham’s historic ties to the iron and steel industry. For its first hundred years Birmingham was a foundry town, the South’s foremost industrial center and the world’s largest producer of cast iron pipe. No form of art is more suited for creation in Birmingham than cast iron art. Nowhere in Birmingham is it more appropriate than Sloss, where iron was made for ninety years.
Since initiating the metal arts program in 1985, Sloss has offered workshops, exhibitions, and conferences on all aspects of metal working—forging, fabricating and casting—but focuses primarily on the use of cast iron as a sculpture medium. Sloss hosted the First and Second International Conferences on Contemporary Cast Iron Art in 1988 and 1994, respectively, and has organized the biennial National Conference on Cast Iron Art since 1997.
For further information about Sloss Metal Arts, visit SlossMetalArts.com.
