Molten iron is carefully poured into molds, which often flame and smoke after the red hot liquid metal fills their negative space.
BY PAT FARNELLI
The Arts on Fire festival has heated up Scranton for the past five years, illuminating the stone and brick arches of the historic Iron Furnaces on Cedar Street on the first Friday night in June.
This year, several Susquehanna County high school students joined in the tribal rite for the second time, and spent a month preparing molds to cast molten iron into shapes of their own invention.
“We are a community, a tribe,” said Nikki Moser, cofounder of Keystone Iron Works. “This is about community, about history and heritage and placemaking.”
Moser’s ARTS Engage! program for high school students has received its second National Endowment for the Arts grant this year. The workshop focuses on iron casting, and is aimed at students who would like to sculpt with unusual and yes, dangerous materials.
“My partner, Pat McGowan, coined the phrase “live classroom” to describe this event, because it is happening outside a school building, in an authentic location that was so important to Scranton’s culture and history. The kids are trained to work together, in collaboration with professional artists, in a setting of danger and risk and physical transformation.”
Several Susquehanna County students, including of Keegan Ficcaro of Mountain View High School and LaAnna Farnelli of Elk Lake, learned how to make their own molds while assuming the caution and choreography required for safely pouring the hot orange liquid iron into the molds.
Red hot molten iron is poured from the fire furnace at the Scranton Iron Furnaces. Keegan Ficcaro of Mountain View and LaAnna Farnelli of Elk Lake were among the high school students who participated in the ‘Arts on Fire’ festival.
With the help and supervision of industrial artists from Baltimore, Florida, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, students are able to cast their own work at the site. Molds were prepared in workshops at Keystone College and the AFA Gallery in Scranton. As the molten iron fills the mold, it changes in color and physical state, from liquid to solid, as it cools.
“The molten iron pours like water, and everything it touches catches on fire,” said Farnelli. “It’s such a pretty color.”
A small Bessemer Converter was brought to the industry site on Thursday night, and the students join into the labor of sorting and breaking up scrap iron to be melted down. When the converter is fired up on Friday night, the red hot fire, flying sparks, and melted iron light up the night for the festive occasion, with live music by the Coal Town Rounders and plenty of vendors selling food and drink.
The festival continued all day Saturday and Sunday, and visitors could make a scratched sand mold to be cast with the others. Blacksmithing, glassmaking and other industrial arts were demonstrated as well.
Vendors in tents included artisans making metal crafts, jewelry, iron furniture, metal lawn ornaments, solar lamp posts, and more. At the nearby AFA gallery, two related exhibits were featured for First Friday and the month of June: “Iron Maidens,” a show work by female artists in the United Kingdom and the U.S. who work with iron casting, and an upstairs exhibit of photography from Arts on Fire.
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