Who We Are
The Canadian Society of Contemporary Iron Art is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2019. The purpose of the society is to promote the contemporary transformative processes as well as to promote contemporary cast iron in Canada through events and education. We also aim to create venues for the availability of casting iron and to re-introduce historic industrial methods as a modern artisanal process. Through our activities we intend to recycle metals through the transformative process and to create links between industry and the creative arts as well as promote experimentation in the transformative arts process. Our main objective is to create a community of people who enjoy the transformative process.
Kip Jones
kipjones is an active and experienced public artist, sculptor and instructor living in Hamilton, Ontario. Over the past two decades he has created public and studio based work that have addressed various issues of the critical and conceptual discourse of contemporary three-dimensionality. During a ten-year period of his life he co-owned and operated a small fine art bronze casting facility in Kelowna, BC. By the end of this time he was tired and disillusioned, that initial excitement, awe and amazement of the metal casting process had disappeared into just a job. The passion and the fun of the transformative casting process was re-introduce to him in 2015 when he attended the 11th cast iron symposium at the Serde Art Centre in Azupte, Latvia. This experience re energized his passion for the transformative art of metal casting and led him to travel to other cast iron events to participate and learn.
Joshua Avery
Joshua is a non-exhibiting artist that has been running the Metal Shop at Ontario College of Art and Design University since 2004, and has been teaching in the faculty of Industrial Design since 2012. He has transitioned from exhibiting into being, through various “transformative” practices.
Ana Norton
Ana currently works making video games at Ubisoft Toronto. When she isn’t working, she dreams of superheating molten metal and tends to her growing collection of optical pyrometers. Ana is fascinated by the bridging of the digital and physical worlds she inhabits, and explores this transitory space by means of 3d printing and scanning. She graduated OCADu in 2012 from the Sculpture and Installation program. It was there she started her growing collection of metal melting furnaces. Ana would like to thank her parents’ neighbors, who have yet to call the police or fire department.
Elizabeth M Lopez
Elizabeth M. Lopez is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist based in and around Toronto, exploring themes of timespans, moments and intraconnectivity.
Her work often involves interactivity, dynamic sculptures, and creating durational experiences.
Her work has been shown in Canada and the US.
Ante Benedikt Kurilić
Ante Benedikt Kurilić is an emerging Croatian multidisciplinary artist currently working and living in Toronto. He completed his BFA degree in the Sculpture/ Installation program from OCAD University in 2020.
Ante Benedikt’s practice involves traditional approaches to figurative sculptures and uses multiple techniques and mediums. Ante Benedikt mostly works with clay, plaster, bronze, ceramics, wood, and marble. In his current work, he has explored combining traditional and contemporary digital processes, kinetic installations, various metal casting approaches in aluminum and iron materials, often mixing mediums with everyday objects.
He creates composited artworks that question the impacts of human actions on their environments, exploring the identity of belonging and the absence of dreams.
Vanessa Krause
Vanessa Krause (she/her) is a Toronto based artist and educator born in Stuttgart, Germany. She is an interdisciplinary artist working in metal casting, ceramics and fibre art with a specific interest in domestic crafts such as knitting and crocheting.
Vanessa is a graduate of the MFA program at OCAD University (2020) where she focused on Sloppy Craft within the realm of memory-making and mending using sculptural elements and repurposed material such as worn clothing.
Vanessa’s work is process based and includes the use of mould-making, lost wax casting for bronze, sand moulds for cast iron, as well as ceramic press moulds. By incorporating everyday objects into her work, they become palimpsests for memories, slippages and interruptions.
Vanessa’s work has been exhibited in the United States and in Ontario.