Artists from the Sloss Metal Arts Program Display Works at the Birmingham Public Library

 

Rack, Virginia Elliott, handwoven fabric cast in iron, 2022

An exhibition featuring works by artists of the Sloss Metal Arts program is currently on display at the Birmingham Public Library (BPL). The show features pieces by Virginia Elliott, Hugh Patton, Kara Theart, Alexandra Rose Weaver, and Ajene Williams. 

The exhibition will be on view through Friday, May 31, at the Central Library, where it is installed in the glass cases on the first floor. Media include cast iron, steel, fabric, a large-scale drawing, pales from the Iron River in Michigan, a lightbulb, and more! 

The public is invited to a reception honoring the artists on Saturday, May 4. It will take place from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. in BPL’s Fourth Floor Gallery. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. 

Sloss Metal Arts is a cast iron art program operating out of Sloss Furnaces’ historic No. 2 Casting Shed. The programming is dedicated to teaching and expanding metal casting as an art form that honors the industry upon which Birmingham was built and the iron legacy of Sloss. Sloss Metal Arts provides opportunities and educational resources such as the National Cast Iron Conference, artist residencies, public workshops and classes, and apprenticeship programs for high school students. The program strives to establish an inclusive and accessible hub for metal-based art and practices, a space that celebrates and preserves the metalworking heritage of Birmingham. 

The Sloss Metal Arts exhibition is the latest installment of Art for Everyone, the visual arts series that débuted at BPL in January. The series is made possible by a grant that the Alabama State Council on the Arts awarded to the Friends Foundation of the Birmingham Public Library. 

About the Artists 

Virginia Elliott is a sculptor, weaver, and mold maker from Cincinnati, Ohio currently living and working in Birmingham, AL, as the Metal Arts Director for Sloss Furnaces. Elliott often works with fabrics that she has woven, exploring the intimacy of textiles. She casts fabrics to reflect traditional textures and patterns in forms reminiscent of typical textile displays. Her work recontextualizes a material that is a centerpiece in cultural production and universal domestic intimacy. website: velliott.com. Instagram: @v_r_e_ 

Hugh Patton is an interdisciplinary artist ranging from works that incorporate elements of sculpture, installations, performance, and drawing—making work that typically relies on a site-responsive practice and has a deep intention for specific material choices. Working within themes of labor, process, and the intersection between industry and nature, his works aim to transform, rearrange, and re-contextualize spaces and their contents in order to speak to both the specifics of a place and its connection to a larger or universal context. Instagram: @hugh.patton 

Kara Theart is a young artist in Birmingham, Alabama. A 2022 Visual Art graduate from the Alabama School of Fine Arts, Theart continues her art education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Outside of school, she practices metal arts at Sloss Furnaces and works on her drawings her studio space in downtown Birmingham. Website: karatheart.com. Instagram: @karathe.art 

Alexandra Rose Weaver is an intermedia artist whose creative process is a therapeutic ritual exploring themes of loss, growth, change, and the perpetual evolution of the authentic self. Their practice is rooted in the visual connotations of materials, personal intuition, and the physical act of labor. Through different processes, and their material restraints/requirements, Rose creates dialogue, communicates personal emotions that imitate contemporary issues, and makes space for transformation through reflection. Website: xroseart.com. Instagram: @meltedpennies

Ajene Williams, a Birmingham native, began his art training at Woodlawn High School and as a Summer Youth Apprentice at Sloss Furnaces. He was quickly recognized as a gifted artist and is currently a Senior Artist in Residence at Sloss. As a child, Ajene wanted to be a magician but was never very good. He realized that it wasn’t the magician’s equipment that made illusions, but their hands. Hands are magic, and we can create anything with our hands if we are able to imagine it. Williams’ no longer seeks to create illusions with his magic, but rather to show the world’s deepest, most often missed truths through his sculptures. Instagram: @ajene

By Margaret Splane| Library Assistant III, Community Engagement & Fundraising

Exacerbated Thought Pattern, Alexander Rose Weaver, cast in iron, 2022.