Who is the CSCIA?

The Canadian Society of Contemporary Iron Art (CSCIA) is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2019. The purpose of the society is to promote the contemporary transformative processes as well as to promote contemporary cast iron in Canada through events and education. The CSCIA also aims to create venues for the availability of casting iron and to re-introduce historic industrial methods as a modern artisanal process. 

Through activities and events they intend to recycle metals through the transformative process and to create links between industry, the creative arts, as well as promote experimentation in the transformative arts process. Their main objective is to create a community of people who enjoy the transformative process. The core members of the group are Joshua Avery, Kip Jones, Elizabeth Lopez, Ana Norton, Vanessa Krause, and Ante Benedikt Kurilić. Read below for the history of the CSCIA and the goals of the Society. 

The annual public, outdoor Iron Pour Day is an important event to CSCIA as casting iron is part of the shared heritage of society members. Generally casting is closed away in buildings hidden from people - having a nomadic furnace wandering the landscape brings a process back down to a human scale outside of walls. It shows people they can do it. It’s also a way to celebrate the industrial past that makes up the base of modern civilization. The Hamilton Museum of Steam & Technology is the perfect place to do this as they have so much beautiful Iron.

Craft Ontario: in 10 years, where do you hope the CSCIA will be?

CSCIA: Hopefully we would have a home base for doing sculpture, and warm place to work on furnaces, as well more tools to cut down on all the heavy lifting, figuratively as well as literally. Ideally, we would have expanded our membership of artists and makers beyond southern Ontario, truly earning the “Canadian” part of CSCIA. Besides the art school community, which we could connect with more widely, there is lots of creativity that just doesn’t have readily available access to making resources. 

In 10 year’s time, it would be great for CSCIA to have hosted a variety of artists in the iron-casting community, and have given space for the members, artists and participants to showcase the work they are making. To continually build community connections, between artists (both locally, nationally and internationally) and create a solid network of folks that want to participate and learn from one another - both in terms of sand moulding, lost wax (ceramic shell) and so many other processes to cast metal and create sculptures; and institutions that might otherwise not have the opportunity to cast iron. Ruby is transportable, so the dream would be to take her on a road trip. Of course, we’ll always be nomadic as it is important to keep iron feral.

Kip Jones on the recent history of the CSCIA:

We CSCIA began as a supper club, it was Josh Avery, Ana Bestvater-Norton, Olenka Kleban, Christine Dewancker and myself. We would meet once a month at someone’s place and talk about what could be. We are an OCAD-centric organization as I have taught there since 2012 and Josh works there. From the very beginning finding a place to do the iron event was imperative to any success we might have and the Hamilton Steam and Technology museum had been excited to play host.

The next big event that shaped the organization was through OCAD U; Olenka (who was the CA) and myself took 10 Students to the National Iron Conference at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham AL in the spring of 2019.

Then COVID hit and Tom Doughty and Josh proposed to make a furnace at Tom’s family’s property in Lakefield. So initially it was Josh, Tom, Ana and myself fabricating a furnace and procuring the needs to make that happen. It took over a year as we would spend the weekend camping on the property and fabricating the furnace going once a month over the summers. Naomi Dodd’s and others came to help as we build up the necessary equipment.

With Lakefield as our furnace home we had our first sand mould adventure! It was October 2021 word had got out - Ante, Vanessa, Elizabeth, Joshua L and Matt Walker came to Lakefield. The first Iron Pour was November 2021, it worked - we got metal but it wasn’t hot - we didn't know anything.

With COVID restrictions still in effect we had the second Iron Pour in June 2022, complete with sand mould adventures. We had better metal but were still unsure of our process. With restrictions removed we went forth with conducting our first public Iron Pour event in June 2023. We had one sand workshop at Art Aggregate and the rest of the moulds were done at Matt Walker’s studio in Hamilton. Alison Ouellette-Kirby and Noah Kirby who had also been at the spring National Iron Conference in Birmingham agreed to be the godparents of Ruby, our furnace. Their many years of experience and knowledge in iron pouring events were crucial in our understanding of the workings of the furnace. We had good metal, it was hot and we poured 650#s in 2 hours.

This event spurred an interest from Brandon Vickerd the head of the fine arts department at York U. So together we organized an event for their students in November 2023. Which was very successful and less stress for us as we just brought and managed the furnace.

Which brings us to June 2024 where Alison and Noah returned we had more moulds through Art Aggregate hosting three sand mould workshops. Where we poured 1500#’s of metal, 10 taps of 150#’s. Ruby ran efficiently we tapped out the metal every 11 minutes and over 60 scratch blocks were made by attendees!

Images from the June 8th Iron Pour taken by Konrad Secord-Reitz (@fatscontentandediting)

Want to learn more about making sand moulds and learning about iron pour events? Take a workshop and learn from the CSCIA!

Image artwork: Without / Within, Elizabeth M. Lopez, 2019, cast iron sculpture, 17 '' high in maple stand