The fire of forges lit up the night when WKU’s League of Sculptors hosted Forge Night on Monday, inviting people of all skill levels to forge metal coat hooks.
League of Sculptors is a WKU student organization that hosts events for learning and working with various mediums of sculpture, such as clay and plaster casts. Forge Night was backed by the Kentucky Forge Council, which provided a second forge for attendees to work with. Charles Hearst, a council member and blacksmith, instructed the event at the Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center.
Attendees began by heating metal rods in a forge until they reached a malleable state, at which point the rods were shaped into hooks through repeated hammering on an anvil and bending on a hook-bending jig.
“I really enjoy it,” Sculpting Instructor Anna Rafalowski said. “It’s fun to be around hot metal, and you really have to react quickly to it, and that’s why I like it, because you have to strike while the iron’s hot, as they say.”
Kara Glenn, an assistant graphic design professor and first-time forger, also enjoyed the forging process, despite some initial hesitation.
“I was, I’m going to admit, a little bit scared at first, but once I started working, it kind of came together,” Glenn said. “As soon as I let go and just started enjoying myself and watching the metal, I started creating something I really liked, and I’m really happy with it.”
Junior studio fine art major and League of Sculptors President Maria Boggess hoped that others could overcome that same fear of starting something new.
“Ignore the fear, ignore the anxiety about making it badly the first time, because you’ll never improve if you never start,” Boggess said. “If there’s something that you really want to make, just make it, and you can make it good later.”
