The Pour
Portland’s first Iron Pour, better late than never
Posted by: Lisa Radon on Aug 17, 2009 at 10:00AM
2 Comments
Ben Stagl (left) at his Portland Iron Pour
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Liquid sun. We all agreed that the iron pouring from the cupola looked like liquid sun. And the air smelled like industry and action. At around 8 PM on Saturday in the courtyard in front of OMSI, as the sky transitioned from light to dark and two hours after its scheduled end, the metal scraps melting in the furnace for Portland’s first Iron Pour event (produced by artist Ben Stagl and Caitlin Moore) was finally ready. The plug was removed, the iron shot out of it in a glaring stream, and two volunteers who held a bucket on a long pole carefully poured the iron into the many sand molds arrayed in two lines. Some of the molds with wood framing caught fire.
If it was spectacle for us, it was also reminder of Portland’s industrial iron pouring past. For the participants it appeared to be incredibly exhilarating, as close encounters with the terror of scalding liquid metal might be.
i’d like to add here an emphatic hurrah to ben stagl for his monumental efforts to pull this thing off. he had been talking/scheming/planning this thing for two years and to line up the sponsors and grants and location and helpers and everything it took to make it happen is nothing short of amazing. along with what must have been hundreds of hours of his planning time, he put in a lot of his own money, not the least of which was to purchase three meteorites that came from three different parts of the world that he melted into the mix of liquid iron. he told me that he did this for portland and it was his way of giving back to a city that has done so much for him. when he said that, i paused, realized he wasn’t kidding, and i almost fell off my chair. ben is an amazingly talented artist with a heart of gold and as he heads off to chicago for art school i for one hope he ends up back in portland and continues to share his generosity with the northwest. i assume caitlin put in as much effort and time as well, so thanks also to caitlin! i often ran into them both at one coffee shop or another and they’d say they were just planning the iron pour. after awhile i began to wonder if “iron pour” was code for something else. hah. as someone who is finding myself becoming hardened by the money chasing art world in NYC, i just wanted to comment on ben’s project, and express his hand in reminding me that people do indeed organize art events that are more about community building than resume building. i wish i could have been at the pour to witness ben’s triumph. congratulations ben and caitlin. best of luck to you both, and thank you. -swi
I agree with you, Scott, that Portland benefits so greatly from generosity like Ben’s. I hope that both he and you end up back in Portland after your grad school adventures in Chicago and NY respectively.