"O" is for Oscar, "S" is for Schmidt

Wickersonstudios has been the happy home to visiting artist and teacher, Araan Schmidt, for the last week of May 2010. During that time Schmidt has worked on; completing his 4500# sand mold, fabricating a #420 ladle for casting aluminum, and casting a 120# letter "O" for our son, Oscar, directly into the earth, not to mention casting his own life-size 400# aluminum form.

Michael Wickerson and Jim Whitworth aided Araan Schmidt in 90 degree weather, and I doubt wickersonstudios will see a harder working and more determined individual for the remaining summer months of 2010. Beth Allison documented the entire event and baby Oscar witnessed his fourth iron pour by the age of eight months.

Wickersonstudios now stands in the wake of Michael's one year sabbatical and has the ability to work iron, stone, timber, and raw earth in a facility that can boast having a 60 x 60 sculpture pad, a bridge crane, hoist, a-frame, cupola, ladles, stone tables, a cement and mortar mixer, a horizontal band-saw, drill press, 4000# of coke (coal), a wealth of timber and lumber, and a field of four leaf clovers. In addition, wickersonstudios is fully equipped with a full range of machining, woodworking, landscaping and special sculpture tools.

Please feel free to contact us, should you be interested in proposing a site specific work and/or would just like to shoot around some creative ideas with a herd of deer or a rafter of turkeys.

From Adobe to Adobe

WickersonStudios.com will be seasonally exhibiting a selection of artists and scheduling four public cast iron pours per year. From Adobe to Abobe; the physical building of brick and mortar construction to virtual graphic design applications of Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator and InDesign; artist, Michael Wickerson, and designer, Beth Allison Wickerson, would like to celebrate and share their understanding and appreciation of these art and design forms with the national and international professional and creative community.

Please let us know if you would like to be invited to our Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter openings and iron performances.

Michael, Beth and Oscar Wickerson

Cupola, Cupola

Cupola, Cupola is a complex mixed media sculpture intended to display an alchemic vehicle that fuses together the concepts of both a ship and a bell tower. Inspired by the Klokkenstoelen of Northern Holland, this cupola capped tower and iron casting cupola come together in order to facilitate their own entropic existence. Imagine this smoking leviathan, meandering along, as the bells chime and the wagon lurches, all the while, casting 2500 degree liquid iron into functional wheels and bells.

Cast from boilers placed below the Kansas City Art Institutes administration building in 1904, this artwork memorializes, records and honors the matriarchs of the Wickerson, Polley, Grieve and Evans families in 200 pound iron and nickel cast bells set up to 18 feet in the air. Bellows assist in igniting the charges of iron and coke fuel while the machine struggles to work endlessly into the night.

The ship gathers the flotsam and jetsam of miscast and dead sculptures in its hull and recycles the heavy metals back into
functional equipment. Although "all that is solid melts into air" and "this equipment belongs to the earth", this Sisyphean wagon trudges along, breaks down and rebuilds itself, as it bellows and rings out with all of its might. - Wickerson 2010

"Whether in Cambrian or in other earth
Conceived; or yet in Protozoic slime
And ooze in the abysmal depths of time,
Dawn has concealed thine elemental birth;
Or whether yet, on-creeping man in dearth
Of tool offensive, welcomed thee sublime,
Perverting all thy virtues but to crime
While unmatured lay thy finer worth.
It matters naught-save only this-that now-
Man's better nature to thy baser yields;
His heart is steeled with temper of thine own;
His soul is hardened with thy touch, and thou
Dost send him blindly forth to reap these fields-
'Blood, sweat and tears'-thine iron hand has sown."-G.H. Case, "To Iron Ore", in M.F. Harrington, ed., Poems of Newfoundland, p. 5

"Nor do I doubt that whoever considers this art well will fail to recognize a certain brutishness in it, for the founder is always like a chimney sweep, covered with charcoal and distasteful sooty smoke, his clothing dusty and half burned by the fire, his hands and face all plastered with soft muddy earth. To this is added the fact that for this work a violent and continuous straining of all a man's strength is required which brings great harm to his body and holds many definite dangers in his life. In addition, this art holds the mind of the artificer in suspense and fear regarding its outcome and keeps his spirit disturbed and continually anxious. For this reason they are called fanatics and are despised as fools. but, with all of this, it is a profitable and skillful art and in a large part delightful." Biringguccio, "Pirotechnia

International Residency Program at Can Serrat

Can Serrat is located in a rustic farmhouse just 45 kilometers outside of Barcelona, within the confines of Montserrat Natural Park. During the month of July, Michael David Wickerson will be working on a series of new artworks that will draw from his knowledge of casting and focus on the landscape of the surrounding region. Extensive trips will made to Barcelona, Spain and Toulouse, France in an effort to better comprehend the magnificence of both the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. From the mountains to the sea, Wickerson hopes to find a home, if just for a little while, that can frame both his existence and the one he hopes to bring into the world in the fall.

Visit www.canserrat.org for more details.

Three Weeks of Iron Casting/ Three Artists

Three Artists, 20 thousand pounds of molds, 2000 pounds of iron

During the summer of 2009, artists Araan Schmidt, Michael Wickerson and John Bridges, completed a 20 thousand pound sand casting workshop that spanned 24 days in the month of June and they completed two irons pours for students (Sara Tellini, John Hilger, Mitch Kirkwood), alumni (Casey Palmer, Zac Meyer) and the public (Kim Lindaberry). Working from simple cope & drag designs, multi-piece floating cored molds and inventive 2 & 1/2 ton molds that utilized 850 pound reinforced cores and dozens of 150 pound mold sections, Schmidt, Wickerson and Bridges struggled through the 100 degree heat wave in order to discover what durability and endurance truly mean to both the mind and body.

In the wake of re-casting one ton of iron boilers from past cultural artifacts into new forms ranging from full figures, vessels, bells, abstractions and fire plates, Schmidt, Wickerson and Bridges must now focus on filling their enantimorphs in the late summer months by designing a continuous cupola capable of charging a new 500 pound ladle at KCAI, accessing Clay & Bailey Iron Casting foundry, and simultaneously casting 600 pounds of bronze for one selected artwork.

Casting on this scale has provided the means for testing the stamina, determination and strange conviction one must have in order to push oneself through this kind of un-alienated labor.

Love for labor remains the driving force that passionately weds the means to the ends. - Wickerson July 1st, 2009

Cupola, Cupola

An exhibition of drawings and sculptures by Michael David Wickerson, at the Sluishoef Oranjerie in De Bilt, The Netherlands

Quietly situated both in and around the glass sunroom of the historical Sluishoef located at Utrechtseweg 315 in De Bilt, the Netherlands, Michael David Wickerson has installed a series of his recent drawing and sculptures by collaborating with an open-minded group of trans-continental architects, photographers, artists and digital professionals.

Cupola, Cupola is a collection of new fangled drawings, bronze sculptures and outdoor public works that have been inspired by the time Wickerson has spent traveling, working and living in the Netherlands, specifically Friesland. It is the northern Klokkenstoelen that captured the imagination of Michael Wickerson and later melded with his iron cupola designs. These bell towers and furnace wagons are the subject of this exhibition and the basis of all of Wickerson’s current projects and works.

This trans-continental exchange would not be possible without the generosity of Annemarie Engbers and Hans Sluijmer, partner of Architectuurbureau Sluijmer en van Leeuwen, and Jaroslaw Rodycz and Christel Derksen of Cornbreadworks

USUK Cast Iron Symposium

USUK International Cast Iron Sculpture Symposium at Butley Mills Studios

Chair of the Sculpture Department at the Kansas City Art Institute, Michael David Wickerson, will participate in the 9th USUK Symposium at Butley Studio in Suffolk, England. Alongside fifteen artists selected internationally, Wickerson will have the opportunity to produce new cast iron artworks using traditional and experimental methods. This event will conclude with a Public Iron Pour and Group Exhibition. Please view www.corallambert.com/usuk2008.htm for details regarding selected artists and their proposed artworks.

USUK was founded in 1997 by Sculptor Coral Lambert and over the past ten years has traveled to many different places including Wales, England and in America, New Orleans, Minnesota and New York. The 1st, 3rd and 5th USUK were hosted by Sculptor Laurence Edwards and the artists of Yew Tree Farm in Suffolk, England. They are excited to have the 9th USUK Symposium held at their new home of Butley Mills Studios. Situated two hours north east of London, the studios look out over the Tilde River, Orford Ness surrounded by farmland and ancient Oak woodland.