Art Casts Foundry in New Light

Image Casting, an Oxnard foundry, is a place where gritty commercial industrialism coexists with fine art.

In this factory setting, located in an industrial park, sparks fly, ovens heat metal to 2,900 degrees, and a mean buzzing sound signals the end of lunch.

From the look and sound of it, you’d think the place casts airplane parts--and it does.

But in the 20 years Image Casting has operated in Ventura County, the foundry has been seduced by the creative muse. Soon after it opened, nude statues and other sculptures were added to its repertoire of Harley-Davidson kickstands and other industrial, medical and commercial parts.

“When you have an artist who sculpts a piece, it’s all passion, desire, dreaming,” said Dennis Haddox, 26, who heads Image Casting’s sculpture operation. “I’m able to translate their dreams into reality.”

Artists throughout the area send their clay sculptures to Image to be cast in bronze, aluminum, stainless and other steel. In most cases, the foundry also assembles the final product.

The company, started in Ventura, began primarily as a foundry for industry. Soon, sculptors were knocking at the door. Aside from a brief hiatus from artwork, the company has been engaged in what co-founder Ian McTavish believes to be an industrial endeavor with soul.

“So much of the commercial stuff you do, you may not know what it’s used for. There’s no soul,” he said. “When the day’s over and it gets quiet around here, we’re not spending our time walking around and looking at widgets.”

The foundry’s sculpture efforts now make up about 45% of its business. Thirty-two of its 82 workers devote their time solely to casting, shaping and painting sculpture. All, Haddox said, are artists in their own right.

The process is a combination of skill and vision, where heat plays magic with the metal to create art. Sculptures are cast into molds--first in silicon rubber, then wax, then ceramic--to create the final product.

On the floor, workers pour hot, red wax into white molds. The red wax drips over the molds, creating an effect suggestive of giant slabs of beef in a butcher shop.

Nearby, another worker grinds the base of a 6-foot nude--an ominous aluminum figure with a flowing cape resembling angel wings behind him. Foundry workers have named it “Cape Man,” and when completed, it will grace an oceanfront home.

Outside, a man wearing an insulated suit that makes him look like an extra in a 1950s sci-fi flick, throws open the door to a glowing red oven, removes a crucible filled with molten metal and pours it into plaster molds. The molds glow, heat radiating all around them.

It’s dangerous work, Haddox said, but there have been no major injuries at the foundry.

“Two-thousand nine-hundred degree steel makes short work of you if it contacts your skin,” he said.

The industrial and artistic endeavors overlap so much that workers can be casting the jaw portion of a statue depicting a famous musician, and moments later pouring metal for fabricated jaws to be used in actual human beings. Cooling on a recent afternoon were stainless steel molds used to create titanium mesh, which will eventually be custom shaped to a patient’s jaw during reconstructive surgery.

In a nearby shed, workers use blow torches and glaze to apply color to bronze statues. The work, called patina, involves coating the sculptures with pigment, then heating it to the right texture and hue. It’s tricky, Haddox said, and requires more artistic skill than most other disciplines at the plant.

A worker applies patina to a 3-foot dragon in the corner, the blowtorch casting blue fire over its mouth. Nearby, finished products cool. There, a group of frogs languishes on the table.

Haddox said artists have come to trust the foundry with the manifestations of their dreams and labor. That trust, he said, and the appreciation coming from the artists are probably the most rewarding aspects of crafting sculpture.

“It’s exciting to see somebody’s face--the artist--when you take it from their clay and model and cast it in bronze,” Haddox said. “It’s something that will last forever.”

The foundry is currently finishing Ventura sculptor Paul Wegner’s bronze of the late jazz drummer Buddy Rich, a piece that was commissioned by pop musician Phil Collins.

Wegner appreciates the foundry so much, he’ll probably trust it with his latest project, a Navy-commissioned 10-foot memorial to the men who died aboard submarines. Wegner considers the project, which also commemorates 100 years of submarine technology, the most important of his career.

Wegner, who has been working with the foundry for years, has been impressed with the plant’s evolution and innovation. “Image came back with both barrels loaded,” he said. “They did their homework.”

Thousand Oaks sculptor Donna Mason-Adams brings the masks, horses and faces she creates to Image to be cast in bronze. She describes herself as a dreamer, who is not trying, but going, to make it big.

Each time she sees the final, bronzed product of her work, she feels a little bit closer to her goal.

“It’s intense,” she said. “You can’t stop smiling.”