White Hot:
Expressions in Iron

White Hot: Expressions in Iron features contemporary sculptures composed of cast or fabricated iron, either exclusively or in combination with other materials.  The nine sculptors represented in the exhibition are all based in the Northeast region of the United States and range from emerging artists to those who are well established and renowned both as artists and as teachers: Dave Carrow, Kat Graves, Rory Mahon, Gina Miccinilli, Joseph Montroy, Kenneth Payne, Matthew C. Reiley, Scot Thompson, and Jay Wholley.

Throughout history, iron has been considered a utilitarian metal, inappropriate for use as an artistic medium.  Bronze has been the preferred metal of sculptors, due to its capacity for achieving a wide variety of surface treatments.  In comparison, the surface of iron tends to be coarse and grainy and its potential for alteration is limited.  Not until the late 1950s did artists turn to cast and fabricated iron as a preferred medium for sculpture.

The sculptors in this exhibition are part of a growing community worldwide dedicated to employing and advancing the processes of iron casting and welding.  They exploit the inherent properties of iron and develop innovative techniques to push past limitations of the material's surface to achieve a broad scope of experessive content.  Further evident is the diversity of the artists' creative approaches, from free standing sculptures to assemblages and installations.  For each, iron is one of a whole arsenal of art-making materials, including wood, glass, photography, resin, found objects, and other metals.

Iron casting is one of the few sculptural processes that artists perform as a group.  From start to finish, it is extremely physical and requires commiteed teamwork.  For this reason, the activity provides a unique format for the discussion of ideas and the sharing of technical information, and it generates a sense of community among artists who typically work alone in their studios.  The process by which they create their artwork - fraught with hazard, risk and uncertainty of outcome - validates and sustains the expressive content of the work.

Michael A. Dunbar

Chi Cyclotron, 2010 edition of 2 cast and machined bronze 18 x 11 x 14 inches

Instrumental Transitions
October 16, 2011 - April 22, 2012

Michael Dunbar is well known for his large-scale sculptures characterized by an industrial aesthetic combined with and amplified by precise engineering and superb craftsmanship.  Instrumental Transitions presents another, equally distinguished, aspect of his work.  This exhibition is comprised of fourteen small works from the artist's Machinist Studies series.  The Machinist Studies capture the power and elegance of Dunbar's large, public sculptures on a personal and intimate scale.

One of the most important influences on his artwork has been the machine tool industry of the American Midwest, where Dunbar has lived and worked for most of his life.  More than simply a source of visual references, Dunbar has incorporated the industry's resources and culture into the fabrication of his sculptures.  Working with craftsmen at foundries and fabrication studios, the artist discovered the means to articulate his conceptual and aesthetic concerns.  From every direction his culptures display intriguing patterns of positive and negative space, light and shadow, rhythm and pause, achieved by a profoundly subtle configuration of geometric shapes and connecting joints.

Concepts of time, distance and space are evoked by the many references to clocks, armillary spheres, astrolabes, sextants, compasses, and other mechanisms, threading through Dunbar's sculptures.  He has long been fascinated by the beauty of historic instruments of measurement, which emanates from the necessity of their function.  In his work, he strives for an equal purity of design.  Fabricated in bronze or steel, his sculptures conjure the imagery of mechanical objects used to move and measure the earth, explore sky and space, and transport across vast distances.  Arcs, planes and beams are balanced in ways that imply rotation or other forms of mechanical movement and now seem frozen in time.

Dunbar in the Park

Although the Machinist Studies are intended to stand on their own as works of art, many have inspired large-scale commissions.  Currently on view in the park is a larger version of Dunbar's exquisite Cassiopeia in the Instrumental Transitions exhibition.  You can find it on the Fall/Winter Site Map: #251 at coordinates F2.

About the Artist

Born in 1947, Michael Dunbar lives and works in Springfield, Illinois.  After earning a bachelor's degree at Illinois State University, Dunbar went on to obtain a master's degree in Community Arts Management.  He began making sculpture in 1972.  Dunbar's work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, and he has received over thirty-three commissions for large-scale public sculptures.  In addition, he has received many awards for his work, most recently from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.  Dunbar's artistic career is the subject of a feature length documentary film as well as a monograph published by Suzanne Deats.

Michael Dunbar has balanced his sharply escalating renown as a sculptor with his work as coordinator of the Arts and Architecture Program for the State of Illinois, enabling him to mentor the careers of hundreds of artists for over twenty years.  He is also co-founder of the Pier Walk at Navy Pier in Chicago which affords artists the opportunity to exhibit their work in a prominent public space.