Art students go to London

By Nikolina Hatton

Two Mt. Hood Community College students and a teacher will be traveling in March to Ironbridge, United Kingdom in Northwest Britain, to represent MHCC at the International Conference of Sculptural Iron Casters.

The conference occurs every four years and is attended by iron casting artists from all over the world. It will feature exhibits, panel discussions, workshops, and there will be iron pouring on site.

Though the method of casting iron was invented years before, it wasn’t used as an art medium until the 1960s, said Tamsie Ringler, an MHCC instructor who teaches an iron casting class on campus and is going to the conference.

“It’s a very industrial process,” she said. The iron has to be heated up to 2800 degrees, and then it can be poured. “There’s something about the process,” she said. “It’s very captivating.”

She said it was quite an accomplishment for MHCC to have representatives at the conference, and that an MHCC student from the Integrated Media Department actually designed a poster for the international event.

The students will leave March 31, but the conference doesn’t start until April 5. They will have some extra time to spend in London, and Ringler said they will visit some art galleries, possibly the National Gallery of Art and the Tate Modern.

Toma Villa, one of the students going with Ringler, has never been to Europe, and he’s glad to be going. He said he would be interested in seeing a soccer game or a boxing match while he is there. “It’s gonna be great,” he said.

For the other student, Elyse James, this won’t be quite so new because her father was born and raised in the U.K. She has been there several times, but “I think it’s a great place to visit,” she said. “The people are great over there, very welcoming.” And she said the weather is a lot like Oregon.

Villa and James have both taken Ringler’s iron casting class, and Ringler invited them to come along with her to the conference. Ringler, along with her husband and 1-year-old son, is actually leaving March 5 for a pre-conference workshop in Wales. She is on a teaching sabbatical this term.

The trip is sponsored by the Mt. Hood Foundation, the ASG, the Starseed Foundation and Greenstead Accounting.

Villa first discovered his passion for art when he was a little kid and found himself spray painting in a drain tunnel.

“After that, I fell in love with graffiti,” he said. He hopes to transfer to PSU and get a degree in art. His wife and daughter are accompanying him on the trip.

Ringler said the students would gain an experience of a lifetime, and they will get to know other foreign students and hopefully still interact with them when it is all over.