University of Alabama at Birmingham Assistant Professor of Sculpture Stacey Holloway’s ARS 321: Repetition and Space sculpture class will attend the 2017 National Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art and Practices at Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham.
Holloway, a faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Art and Art History, is a member of the conference’s steering committee. Titled “In Iron We Rust,” the conference will feature demonstrations and panel presentations, iron pours, and workshops on traditional and contemporary casting techniques.
Exhibitions by student and professional artists are also planned at Sloss and around Birmingham, including a student show at Space One Eleven, a professional exhibition at the Sloss Visitors Center Gallery, and the conference juried show featuring works by 15 artists from around the country in the UAB Department of Art and Art History’s Project Space. The juried show at UAB, which will open with a free reception from 8-10 p.m. Friday, April 7, was curated by Birmingham Museum of Art Hugh Kaul Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Wassan Al-Khudhairi, who also is an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History. Visit the NCCCIAP conference website for details and hours for each exhibition: www.nccciap.com/exhibitions.
The Friends of the UAB Department of Art and Art History have paid the registration costs for 11 sculpture students to attend the conference. Friends of the Department of Art and Art History are a group of community members joined for the purpose of offering support to the department, giving particular attention to raising the profile of the DAAH through annual giving to our academic, research and service missions.
The participating artists in the juried show in Project Space are Robin Baker, David Barnum, Jazz Colgan, Erin Cunningham, David Fricke, Cassidy Frye, Emma Levitz, Matthew Mroz, Charles O’Neill, Chris Rothermel, James Vanderpool, Kelly Wilton, Ben Woodeson and Ronda Wright-Phipps.
In addition to attending the conference and its satellite programming, the UAB students will collaborate with visiting School of the Art Institute of Chicago faculty and staff on a furnace pour. Joining from SAIC are lecturer Aaron Nicholson, foundry manager Dan Matheson and SAIC Columbus materials manager Eric Fuertes.
“I have attended many of these conferences as both a student and a professional sculptor,” Hollway said. “Each conference is incredibly informative, entertaining and exhilarating and provides an opportunity to make professional connections throughout the international iron-casting community. I am excited that our UAB students will have the same opportunity to develop their art practice and grow their professional networks this year.”
Department of Art and Art History’s Art Studio lab supervisor Heather Spencer Holmes will also serve as a Birmingham liaison for the conference.
Support from the biennial NCCCIAP helps the Metal Arts Program at Sloss Furnaces preserve the history and knowledge integral to working with cast iron processes. In turn, Sloss Metal Arts provides opportunities for Birmingham and surrounding communities that propagate and expand technical, aesthetic and conceptual issues pertinent to the discipline of metal casting.
For more information about the conference, visit www.nccciap.com or contact Holloway at shollow@uab.edu.