Drift Journal
Festival goers will create molds for an iron pour facilitated by FeLion studios.
Cambridge has long been known for its pottery scene. Visitors from nearby Madison and further afield have flocked to the village to shop and visit artist studios at the annual Earth, Wood and Fire Studio Tour and the popular Spring Pottery Tour.
The village also ran two arts-related festivals for 30 years — Cambridge Pottery Festival and the Cambridge Arts Fair. Now, the organizers of the inaugural Midwest Fire Fest, July 23-24, hope to ignite interest in the flame-based arts while engaging visitors at a deeper level.
“These days, people want to get out and experience and do interesting things, and not just shop for stuff,” says Laurie Struss, a glass artist and co-founder of the festival.
“We want to show the public what goes into making art,” adds Struss. “When we buy art, we don’t just pay for the final piece. We pay for all the time and experience that an artist puts into their lifetime of creation.”
Jason Weiss
A custom-built kiln for the Big BonFiring.
According to Mark Skudlarek, artistic director and a co-founder of the festival, hundreds of clay artists were once employed by national retail and wholesale distributors based out of Cambridge during the “country home” decorating trend of the 1980s. After the hype cooled, many potters remained in Cambridge and opened their own studios. Skudlarek has owned and operated Cambridge Wood Fired Pottery since 1988.
The festival he helped put together will feature an iron pour where visitors can carve their own molds; a public firing of clay pots and a massive clay statue; and demos of knife forging, glass blowing and blacksmithing. Live bands and fire dancers will perform throughout the weekend, and Underground Food Collective will cater a fire-cooked dinner for ticketholders.
A Saturday highlight is an iron pour orchestrated by Alisa Toninato of Madison’s FeLion Studios. In a three- to four-hour process, nearly a ton of melted iron, made of recycled radiators and bathtubs smashed into chips, will be heated with highly refined carbon in a furnace. When red-hot iron spews out, it will be poured into sand molds etched by festival-goers. The pour requires a team of at least 30 people, and volunteers are expected from throughout the region.
Drift Journal
Reclaimed iron for Saturday’s pour.
“There’s nothing fast in making something from scratch,” Toninato says. “The foundry process is very intense.”
Also on Saturday, clay artists will demonstrate a pit firing — the earliest form of a kiln. A 10-by-10-foot pit dug into the ground will be lined with bricks and sawdust. Clay pots thrown by the Clay Collective, a group of nine Cambridge-area potters, will be nestled inside and covered with more sawdust. Then the pit will be lit to reach temperatures of 1,800 degrees. The cooled pots will be available for purchase Sunday.
During Saturday’s “Big BonFiring,” a six-foot-tall sculpture of “Firezilla,” a fire-breathing dragon head made with more than 2,000 pounds of clay, will be fired on a platform in a specially constructed kiln. The kiln will be opened at the high temperature of 2,200°F to display the firing process.
In addition to the interactive demonstrations, the festival also includes vendor booths with pottery, glass, jewelry and knives available for purchase.
Midwest Fire Fest takes place in Westside Park in downtown Cambridge, approximately 20 miles southeast of Madison. For more information and a full schedule of events, see midwestfirefest.com.
