the Foundry Tree project
Gabriel Akagawa
Gabriel Akagawa
Foundry Tree is a photographic project documenting the lineage of contemporary artists working with cast iron. Each artist is photographed individually wearing full leathers, with helmet under arm. The relationships to teachers, mentors and/or students are recorded through these digital photographs which are later mapped into a genealogy at http://foundrytree.wikispaces.com/ .
The documenting process began at the 2009 National Conference on Cast Iron Art at SLOSS Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama when 250 people were photographed. This photography and project is an artwork meant to link generations of artists casting iron. I would like to continue this project at other conferences, schools, and events. In order to keep the quality of images consistent I am taking the images myself with an assistant.
To accomplish this monumental task, I am trying to arrange visiting lectures and exhibitions at universities, galleries and institutions to partially fund my travels with honoraria. My plan is to show the physical, photographic “tree” on a wall, while the web-based entity is a resource for artists.
Thank you.
Take good care,
Gabriel Akagawa
Teddy here is in the heroic contrapposto stance suggested for all participants.