BLOG07: Nov. 7., 2021
ALUMINATI
Friday night was the culmination of an event I’d been planning with my students at the University for our annual Art Walk, where the public came to share the foundry experience with us. Through my work, I challenge traditional attitudes surrounding foundry practices such as that it is masculine, ableist, and exclusive- a medium of privilege. In this event, run by a diverse group of women, we melted down scrap aluminum and cast some experimental works and many small works made by and with the audience, demonstrating that it is not an exclusionary practice to be guarded or gatekept.
I tested out my idea for memorializing many people’s hand-impressions in sand molds to gather a record of the crowd, a form of “public monument” made by a public gathering. I prepared several molds and they look like they each ended up quite different, but I have not opened them up yet. I look forward to seeing the results and sharing the outcomes and further thoughts on this experiment soon. Until then, please enjoy these pictures of the foundry performance that night. It felt very empowering to share this process with so many people!
Photos by Baron Tarjoto
