Multi-Level Foundry
Liz Ensz and Lloyd Mandelbaum
2 week course || SCULPT 660 001 || 3 credit hours || Lab Fee: $200

In this multilevel metal casting course, students will learn the fundamentals of pattern generation, simple and multi-part mold making techniques with sodium silicate bonded sand, casting with bronze, aluminum, and iron, and finishing and patination techniques for their castings. Explorations will be informed by the materiality of molten metal and molding processes, the history and technologies of metal casting, and discussion of cast metal sculpture in contemporary art. In the spirit of “there is no “I” in foundry,” teamwork and safe foundry practices form the foundation of the course. Students will be encouraged to experiment and respond to the natural environment with patterns made at Ox-Bow in an open-air sculpture studio.

FACULTY

Liz Ensz was born in Minnesota to a resourceful family of penny-savers, metal scrappers, and curators of cast-offs. With an interdisciplinary approach, their work ruminates on the mass-cultural investment in disposability and the human desire to imagine permanence through emblems, monuments, and commemoration. Ensz has exhibited textiles and sculpture nationwide, including Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Roots and Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago, IL; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; and Goucher College, Baltimore, MD. Awards include The John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program in Foundry, Sheboygan, WI; Salem Art Works, Salem, NY: Playa, Summer Lake, OR; LATITUDE, Chicago, IL; and Blue Mountain Center, Blue Mountain Lake, NY; City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Grant, and The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Travel Fellowship, among others.

Lloyd Mandelbaum is an artist and owner of the art casting foundry Chicago Crucible, which has been producing cast bronze, aluminum, and iron sculpture for public and private clientele since 2009. Lloyd received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an emphasis in metal arts and has been in the field ever since. Lloyd also designs and builds foundry equipment for himself, other businesses, and institutions. Lloyd’s personal sculpture is figurative and abstract and is intended to evoke an energetic liveliness despite being made of static cast metal. In addition to operating his business and creating his own work, Lloyd has taught, lectured, spoken on panels, and consulted on foundry craft, operation, construction, and development for universities, industry, and individual artists across the country and internationally. 

Blacksmithing: Sculptural Forms
James Viste
2 week course || SCULPT 623 001 || 3 credit hours || Lab Fee: $150

This intensive will start with an introduction to the fundamentals of forging, and move rapidly toward advanced projects. We will focus on the hot manipulation of material with the forge, anvil, and hammer as our primary tools. A referential history of forged ironwork (architectural, functional, and sculptural) will serve as a source of inspiration. Students will be encouraged to produce a site-specific piece based on line and its relationship to chosen surroundings on campus.

FACULTY

James Viste was raised on a farm in Wisconsin, received a Bachelors degree from The University of Wisconsin, La Crosse; and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI. He is a nationally known blacksmithing demonstrator and exhibitor and has participated in several National Ironwork Restoration Projects including Cranbrook Educational Community and the Detroit Institute of Arts. He has worked for studios throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Michigan. He is currently the Manager of Edgewise Forge L.L.C., Detroit, MI; and employed as an instructor/technician by the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI.

Casting in Context
Steven Haulenbeek and Pete Oyler
1 week course || SCULPT 665 001 || 1 credit hour || Lab Fee: $100

This one-week design focused class will explore the relationship between industrial approaches to production and the natural environment. Making use of Ox-Bow’s unique location, natural, raw, found materials will be used as source material for mold making and on-site metal casting of functional objects. With an emphasis on finding creative ways to use readily available materials in the design process, this class will emphasize hands-on learning and students will develop skills in mold making, casting, and iterative design thinking. Students will work collaboratively throughout the casting process and will embrace a process based approach to making functional objects. Drawing inspiration from process-based designers working at various scales of production–including Hella Jongerius, Max Lamb, Chen Chen and Kai Williams–this course will explore how a range of contemporary designers expand traditional approaches to making objects and develop new processes through iteration. Readings by design critics David Pye, Alice Rawsthorn, and Murray Moss will help to inform and contextualize studio discussions. Key to all course content is an emphasis on different approaches to independent studio practice and production methods.By the end of this course, students should expect to produce one functional cast object and have thorough documentation of process.

FACULTY

Steven Haulenbeek is a Chicago based industrial designer and artist. He received his bachelors in drawing and sculpture from Hope College in Holland, Michigan in 2002 and received his Masters degree in Designed Objects from SAIC in 2006. In 2010 he founded his independent design practice with the interest in experimental, material, and process-based objects for the home. Steven Haulenbeek Studio is represented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris,

London and New York as well at The Future Perfect in New York and San Francisco. Steven’s work passes by the typical design/build format and instead seeks to invent a production framework by which objects emerge more organically. “Ice-Cast Bronze” and “Resin-Bonded Sand” are two of his best-know experimental processes developed in this spirit. TheIce-Cast Bronze collection pairs the natural freezing cold climate of the Chicago winter with the lost-wax process to create uniquely textured objects and furniture in cast bronze. The RBS Series (Resin-Bonded Sand) utilizes silica sand, a typically disposable industrial byproduct, to create colorful sculptural objects, furniture and lighting.

Pete Oyler is a product and furniture designer whose work explores the intersections of design, craft, contemporary culture, and history. Oyler produces work for license and larger volume production under his own name and is a Principal at Assembly Design, an award-winning studio he co-founded with interior designer Nora Mattingly. His studio practice emphasizes both traditional and experimental approaches to a wide range of materials and methods of production. His work has been exhibited and published internationally and he has received numerous awards including Forbes’ “30 Under 30”, the Metropolis “Likes Award for Innovation in Design”, Sight Unseen’s “American Design Hot List,” and Newcity’s “Design 50: Who Shapes Chicago.” Based in Chicago, Oyler is an Assistant Professor in Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Hard Lines: Drawing with Steel
Devin Balara
1 week course || SCULPT 663 001 || 1 credit hour || Lab Fee: $50

This hybrid sculpture and drawing course will focus on steel fabrication and the translation of line on paper to line in space. Students will learn to use steel as a drawing material with demonstrations in hot and cold bending, modular construction, welding, and finishing strategies. Technical demos and work time will accompany discussions about daily sketchbook practices and the ways in which literal weight can be given to simple doodles or cartoon graphics. This course is suitable for all levels of shop experience; students will quickly gain confidence with equipment and be encouraged to play and improvise independently with the material at as large a scale as they choose. Students are required to complete 3 assignments over the course of the week, one which will reinforce basic knowledge of linear steel fabrication and safety, and two further assignments, utilizing linear steel drawings at the scale of the student’s choosing. Ultimately, students may deploy work into a particular site or landscape and let their sketches stretch their legs.

FACULTY

Devin Balara’s work pokes at the clumsy and absurd ways nature is deployed and consumed using sculptural illustrations inspired by bad omens, mirages, desert island logic, and the outdoors as both picturesque and unruly. Employing steel as a drawing material allows the imagery to freely distort and relate to surrounding space and objects, shifting perspective and narrative with each new line of sight.

Miniatures/Models/Massives: Making and Unmaking Monumental Sculpture
Eliza Myrie
2 week course || SCULPT 664 001 || 3 credit hours || Lab Fee: $150

Monuments are vessels for collective remembrance. They define the ways in which society is expected and directed to behave in the face of the events and/ or persons represented. Monuments offer an opportunity to express, reflect upon, and externalize emotions through a form. They are often at a scale that demands our attention. This course will collectively examine what defines a monument. Students will look at events and people who society has deemed worth memorializing, and the impact these memorial forms have on ourselves and our culture. Studying monuments made or erected post-1950, the class will engage a long view of historical events and artists working contemporarily at a monumental scale. Works and attendant texts include The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, The AIDS Memorial Quilt, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Bear’s Ears, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, Maren Hassinger’s Monuments, Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1980/1981, Lauren Halsey’s The Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project, Claes Oldenburg’s proposed monuments, Michael Rakowitz’s A Color Removed, and Robert Smithson’s A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey. Students will complete quick in-class exercises designed to jumpstart sculpting and will be expected to complete three finished works, two individually and one as a group. Students will be expected to participate in class discussions and critiques, as well as complete written responses to texts. The final group project will be presented to the larger Ox-Bow community in a celebration, ceremony or memorial parade designed by the class.

FACULTY

Eliza Myrie, b. 1981, New York. Myrie received her MFA from Northwestern University and was a participant at the Skowhegan School. Myrie has been an artist-in-residence at Bemis Center, Yaddo, SFAI, MacDowell Colony, and University of Chicago and received grants from Propellor Fund and 3Arts Projects. She is a lecturer at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and co-founder of The Black Artists Retreat [B.A.R.]. Exhibitions include Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago (2018); Gallery 400, Chicago (2017); Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2016); Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago (2016); Roots & Culture, Chicago (2014); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago (2012); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2011). Myrie’s work considers labor and laboring as a physical and conceptual endeavor that intersects and complicates assignations/delineations of value across gender, socioeconomic, racial, etc. categories.

Virtual Artifacts: Mold Making, Hydroprinting, and Screenspace Objects
Christopher Meerdo
2 week course || SCULPT 662 001 || 3 credit hours || Lab Fee: $200

This two week intensive course will introduce participants to the moldmaking process while using the screenspace as source material. This course will consider how non-material modes can manifest into tangible object hood. With a focus on both form and surface, the second half of the class will introduce the hydroprinting technique. Typically used in industrial applications, water transfer printing allows students to reimagine their sculptures rich with surface images. Course readings will include essays that consider historic perspectives on computational visual culture as well as contemporary positions. Scholars and artists include: Rosalind Krauss, Sonia Sheridan, Hiwa K, Prosthetic Knowledge, and Timur Si-Qin. Course assignments will move from screen objects to physical objects, culminating in hydroprinted forms that combine both two and three-dimensional compositional spaces.

FACULTY

Christopher Meerdo is a Chicago-based artist who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Lithuania. Meerdo’s work was recently currently featured in a year-long solo exhibition at the Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art in Pittsburgh. He was an artist in residence at the SIM Program in Reykjavik, Iceland and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Meerdo received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent exhibitions include Exgirlfriend, Berlin; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Coco Hunday, Tampa, FL; Floating Museum, Chicago, IL; Cabinet Magazine, Brooklyn, NY; SIM Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland; The National Gallery of Kosovo and a traveling exhibition in Birmingham and Leicester, UK. Meerdo is currently a participant at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands.