What Iron Maiden symbolizes in the music world is much like what an iron pour is in the art world – the ‘heavy metal’ of artwork.

To enlighten the masses on this relatively new form of the visual arts, the foundry folk have decided to open up the process to the public next week in an event titled “Cupola Iron Pour Artwork.”

Jim Buonaccorsi, associate professor of art sculpture, makes special note to mention where it all began, the pioneer of iron casting.

“It started in the early 60s when Julius Schmidt decided to scale down the industrial technique for art and chose instead to use iron,” Buonaccorsi said.

He said since then, iron casting has steadily found its way into universities.

However, it was when Buonaccorsi began teaching at the University that he won the M.G. Michael Award.

With that faculty grant, he brought in Charles Hook, a sculpture professor at Florida State University.

Introducing Buonaccorsi to this “cowboy technology,” Hook showed him how to build cupola furnaces, which are used to melt cast iron and other metals. Afterward, his intrigue in the craft took flight.

Now teaching classes inside the Thomas Street art complex, Buonaccorsi has transformed the studio into what is vaguely reminiscent of a construction zone.

In a pile lay old recycled heating furnaces, sinks and radiators from which iron can be melted down and extracted.

The fun part is breaking these pieces of junk to bits – with a sledge hammer.

The choice of iron over other materials is simply because it is cheap and pales in comparison to the price of other metals.

“It’s practically free,” Buonaccorsi said.

The students acknowledge their contribution to the environment through this process that simultaneously creates art and advocates recycling.

“To an extent in iron casting, you’re doing another form of recycling. You’re taking old sinks and radiators that would have otherwise been tossed out and making art,” said Doug Barton, a first year graduate student from Hattiesburg, Miss.

Also, it must be duly noted that with cupola furnaces burning at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, this grit-your-teeth, hands-on art form leaves no room for the weak and feeble.

Buonaccorsi should know this best: he built each furnace that currently resides in the iron cast area.

It is these furnaces and the gritty experience of using them that makes the foundry men and women so eager to demonstrate iron pour casting.

“It’s why I’m so interested. It’s the use of iron and cupola furnaces that gives you the chance to take the solid form, melt it back down to its original form, and make whatever you want out of it,” Barton said.

However, Buonaccorsi said, “this year will be a small pour.”

It just so happens that this weekend, Sloss Furnaces will be hosting its fifth biennial National Conference on Cast Iron Art in Birmingham, Ala. No doubt, that is where many of the foundry folk will be.

Shut down in 1971, “Sloss [Furnaces] is the big pioneer of the technology that has perpetuated this art and has since been preserved as a historic site,” Buonaccorsi said.

Promoting the age-old art of metal casting, the Cupola Iron Pour Artwork offers a chance to witness a technique that has existed for thousands of years and still exists today – as art.