Canadian Society of Contemporary Iron Arts - CSCIA

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The Arty Crowd funding sources require inclusion of members who identify as belonging to priority groups encompassing: Indigenous, ethnocultural communities, rural or remote residents, youth, and Francophones (english and french). Hamilton Arts Council further wants to measure its success in attracting members from all the diverse groups we serve in the Greater Hamilton Area arts community, including those who are LGBTQ2S+, and persons with disabilities. We will use the aggregates of the information collected here to measure our success in making The Arty Crowd an accessible and safe space for all who join. We thank the members of the committee from the Safer Spaces Project who advised us in creating an inclusive self-identification process.

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All profile holders must live or work in Hamilton, Ancaster, Dundas, Flambourough, Glanbrook, Stoney Creek, Waterdown, Six Nations of the Grand River.

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“Rivers of iron!” *
Canadian Society of Contemporary Iron Arts – CSCIA – is a non-profit collective/assembly of creatives promoting experimentation in contemporary iron arts. Our purpose is to promote the contemporary transformative processes of metal casting in Canada through events and education. We aim to create opportunities to cast iron artworks and to meld historical industrial methods with modern artisanal processes, with a variety of mouldmaking and metal casting events for members and the greater public community.
Headquartered in Hamilton Ontario, CSCIA arose from long-time musing, materializing during the lull of early pandemic restrictions. CSCIA connects to networks of an international iron-casting artist community, south of the border and in Europe, through conferences and iron pour events.
Our source metal is recycled materials from demolitions and renovations, a re-use which lends special meaning to the process of making and artworks themselves.
Our iron furnace, Ruby, is a transportable cupolette furnace keen to demonstrate the almost alchemic transformation of discarded iron into molten glowing heat to sculptural and performance artworks which provoke and delight.
We were back June 2024 with our second public iron pour event at the Hamilton Museum of Steam and Technology, bigger and better than ever (over 700 people attended), enthralling folks with the choreography of fire, flames and heat that turns solid metal to liquid orange hot liquid and filling moulds. Many took home iron disks and tiles of their own design, made from open-faced "scratch blocks".  We hosted an accompanying Artists’ Talk on the preceding night, at the museum’s Woodshed, and also hosted a pop-up iron art works display there over the two days, examples of what emerges from those moulds.
Thanks to all of you who came out to the pour, and thanks for all the support from Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton and the Museum of Steam and Technology. We’re already thinking ahead to next year’s event! We strive to open up the opportunity to be part of this creative team experience to people from diverse backgrounds, capabilities and skills in a respectful and sharing environment.
For more info, or to contact us, check out the <a href="https://www.cscia.ca/">CSCIA website</a>
Hope you can join us sometime! Stay tuned for more details on upcoming events.
* exclamation by Tom Doughty – founding member and fabricator – upon seeing molten iron flow during Ruby’s inaugural melt in November 2021

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