In May, 2016 students from Wirt-Emerson School of Visual and Performing Arts, located in Gary, Indiana, created 30 cast iron sculptures using sand and scrap iron during a workshop held by resident teacher and artist Aaron Leif Nicholson. This project was designed as a way to connect students to the process at the foundation of Gary's history, ironworking.
Students carved one and two piece molds from blocks of sand and then cast them in molten iron that had been salvaged from local scrap yards. The process is similar to that of making steel in the ovens of U.S. Steel Gary Works, one of the largest Steel Mills in the Western Hemisphere. Coke, the fuel for the furnace, was foraged from local train tracks, where it had fallen during transport.
The students artworks were displayed in the Sand and Steel exhibit at the Marshall J. Gardner Center.

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