Casting the Body & the Everyday

with Soo Shin
$250 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Skill-building

In this introductory course, students will obtain technical skills and a fundamental understanding of mold-making. Using the techniques learned in class, students will experiment with various ways to capture the everyday and the body while examining personal symbolism, rituals, and the border between art and daily life. Students will practice imprint, ready-made object, and body casting through four exercise projects using clay, plaster, slip, alginate, silicone, and resin. The class will look into art movements in history, such as Arte Povera, Neo-Dada, and Fluxus, via lectures to find the lineage of the everyday in visual art. We will discuss the practices of artists such as Ian Breakwell, Sarah Lucas, Gabriel Orozco, David Altmejd, Liz Magor, Cornelia Parker, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and many others, to consider various possibilities of materials, objects, and rituals to trace the everyday. Readings will include Joseph Kosuth’s, “Art After Philosophy and Selected Writings, 1966-1990 (Part II: Theory as Praxis: A Role for an ‘Anthropologized Art’)”, MIT Press. Students will develop their final project using one of the four exercise techniques. Students are encouraged to adopt the natural environment of the Ox-Bow campus as their new everyday and explore it as the source of pattern materials for their molds. Assignments will include inviting students to consider sculpture as a means of recording, creating a new daily routine that involves Ox-Bow's surroundings. Using imprints of materials and traces from it they will cast the imprints into several plaster blocks. Students will also cast a body part in a symbolic gesture. Incorporating found materials, objects, or sites of your choice with your work to create five sculptures or installations as a final project.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code SCULPTURE 690 001. 

Soo Shin (she/her; b. South Korea) is an interdisciplinary artist who employs a diverse range of materials—ceramic, brass, concrete, wood, and seawater—to evoke themes of connection, spatial displacement, and longing. She is the recipient of a fellowship at Djerassi Artist Residency, an Individual Artist Grant from the Illinois Arts Council, and the Vilcek Foundation Fellowship at MacDowell. Shin’s work has been presented at The Luminary, St. Louis, MO, as well as Chicago venues including Patron Gallery, Goldfinch, Chicago Manual Style, LVL3, and Chicago Artists Coalition. She has completed residencies at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Vermont Studio Center, Art Farm, and Ox-Bow. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and both a BFA and an MFA from the Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea.

Blacksmithing: Sculptural Forms 

with Natalie Murray
$250 lab fee | June 14–27 | Skill-building

This intensive will start with the fundamental techniques of forging, and move quickly into more advanced projects. We will focus on the processes of moving material while hot, and the forge and anvil will be the primary tools of achieving form. As a corollary, the history of forged ironwork (architectural, tools, and sculpture) will serve as a source of inspiration. Each student will also be encouraged to make an inflated sheet metal sculpture.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code SCULPTURE 672 001.

Natalie Murray (she/her) is a sculptor and fabricator. Her work has taken her from her Midwestern roots all the way to the largest women’s university in the world, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to build some of its first makerspace facilities. Murray is currently based in the US, working in large-scale, custom metal fabrication serving a variety of industries around the globe. In addition, she teaches welding classes, including the Women in Welding course at the Arc Academy. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Imaginative Armatures & Alternative Covers 

with Jessee Rose Crane
$250 Lab Fee | June 28 – July 4 | Exploratory

In this hands-on sculpture course, students will build three-dimensional armatures and cover them with a range of materials that reflect their individual ideas and aesthetics. Working in Ox-Bow’s Metals Studio, participants will fabricate skeletal frameworks from wood, metal, and found or natural objects, then experiment with unconventional surfaces such as hot glue, foraged materials, and recycled scraps. Through demonstrations in welding, joinery, and finishing, students will learn to balance structure and play, creating expressive forms that merge intuition, resourcefulness, and personal narrative. Slide lectures and discussions will connect students’ projects to a lineage of artists who have redefined sculptural form and material. We will examine the organic abstractions of Barbara Hepworth, the accumulative constructions of Leonardo Drew, and the monumental playfulness of Niki de Saint Phalle. Additional context will include the collaborative experiments of Black Mountain College and approaches ranging from the minimalist clarity of Brancusi and Mid-Century Modern design to the maximalist abundance of Nick Cave and Allyson Mitchell. Readings and screenings—such as Taking Imagination Seriously (Janet Echelman, 2013) and Design and Play: The Story of Charles and Ray Eames (Dave Buck, 2021)—will expand our understanding of design, sustainability, and emotional resonance in sculptural work. Assignments will invite students to experiment with scale, texture, and conceptual layering through two main projects: one three-dimensional self-portrait and one abstract sculptural design. Both will emphasize the use of personally meaningful or repurposed materials as a way of exploring identity, memory, and form. By the end of the course, students will leave with a deeper understanding of structure and surface—and a set of imaginative, unconventional sculptures that embody Ox-Bow’s spirit of invention and play.

SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code SCULPTURE 697 001.

Jessee Rose Crane (she/they) is a multidisciplinary sculptor, arts administrator, and musician. Her approach to sculpture joins technical skills with a creative process that encourages play and embraces art in the everyday. Her practice combines steel with various media to craft both functional objects and conceptual experimentations used in exhibitions, videos, and live performances with her band Glow in the Dark Flowers. Crane received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She is the Director of Rose Raft, an artist and musicians’ residency and analog recording studio founded in 2015, and has taught several metals/sculpture classes at Ox-Bow over the years. She takes joy in giving students ample individual attention and holistic support.

Breaking Good: Improvisational Stained Glass 

with Devin Balara
$250 lab fee | July 13–25 | Skill–building

This class will provide a full overview of stained glass techniques. Using the copper foil method, students will learn to cut, grind, and solder colorful glass sheets and shards. Emphasis will be placed on experimentation, improvisation, and using what you find among existing scraps. We will explore three-dimensional form construction, template design, and strategies to use stained glass in your own practice. Those with previous stained glass experience will find space in this class to play and take risks, while beginners will come away confidently knowing the rules of glass—and how to break them!  We will engage in readings and ongoing discussions of color theory while considering artists who use color, light, and line, such as Hilma af Klint, Kerry James Marshall, Raúl de Nieves, and Wells Chandler. Assignments will invite students to find their way through a spectrum of glass pieces and arrange them with a focus on color harmony and intentional refraction of light. The class will culminate in a burst of site-specific installations throughout Ox-Bow’s campus.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code SCULPTURE 693 001.

Devin Balara (she/her) is an artist whose work has notably been exhibited at Atlanta Contemporary; Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn; Spring Break Art Show, New York; Roots & Culture, Chicago; the International Sculpture Center, Hamilton Township, NJ; and, most recently, Coco Hunday, Tampa, FL. She has worked for over a decade as a metal shop manager for various institutions, including eight years at Ox-Bow. She received a BFA in Sculpture from the University of North Florida in 2010 and an MFA in Sculpture from Indiana University in 2014. She currently works as a freelance stained glass artist and educator.

Pour Decisions: Foundry Fundamentals & Practice

with Lloyd Mandelbaum
$250 Lab Fee | August 9 - 22 | Skill-building

This course introduces the fundamentals of metal casting through hands-on exploration of bronze, aluminum, and iron. Students will learn the professional techniques used by art casters to mold, pour, and finish their own sculptural works while emphasizing accessibility and a DIY approach. Through this process, participants will gain a deep understanding of how raw materials, heat, and form intersect in the transformation of metal. Historical and contemporary figures such as Deborah Butterfield, Hanna Jubran, and George Beasley will serve as case studies, offering insight into how artists have used casting to explore structure, gesture, and meaning. The class will also engage in shared readings and screenings, including Sand Molding Basics by Lloyd Mandelbaum and documentation of an academic iron pour filmed by the Chicago Crucible. Students will complete at least one finished cast object created from a two-part sand mold and cast in bronze or aluminum, with full attention to shaping, joining, refinement, and patination. The course covers a broad range of processes—multi-part mold making, crucible and cupola furnace operation, and metal finishing—equipping students with the technical and creative tools to bring new dimension to their sculptural practice.

This course is available for non-credit only.

Lloyd Mandelbaum (he/him) is a metal sculptor and the founder of Chicago Crucible, an art casting foundry started in Chicago in 2009, with its chief production facility now located in Hamilton, MI. Mandelbaum utilizes a variety of molding and casting methods to produce both his own work and that of artists from across the country and internationally. His focus is on cast bronze, aluminum, and iron, integrating traditional analog and contemporary digital methods to keep pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in the art casting arena. He also designs, builds, and markets foundry equipment for other foundries and artists. Mandelbaum received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 and worked with a variety of foundries and artists in the Chicago region before going on to found his own business. He has also taught at various universities, schools, and conferences, as well as conducted workshops centered on building and assisting in the operation of foundries for artists in the US and Mexico.