Mad Madison Metals forges creativity

A harvest helmet that holds growing wheat and plays music, metal safety goggles and miniature ice cream scoops – these are just a few of the objects produced by University of Wisconsin–Madison student metal artists.

Working amid the hammering of other students on copper vases and the roar of another student buffing metal in the seventh floor of the Humanities Building is one of these metal artists, Kateryna Gudziak, a senior pursuing a bachelor of fine arts and a degree in Spanish.

“I was looking for a dependable career in the sciences but after the first year I said ‘You know what — art is really my passion.’ I decided that I was going to follow it and I’ve been taking metals classes here ever since,” says Gudziak, president of Mad Madison Metals, a student organization that focuses on building a community of campus metal artists.

Mad Madison Metals provides students the opportunity to connect with other metal artists, visit museums and other workshops throughout the state and attend guest lectures about metalworking from professional artists. The group also received an award to attend the Society of North American Goldsmiths conference in Minneapolis this spring.

The group hosts a fundraiser featuring jewelry and metal work where members sell their work to benefit the club and allow the organization to bring in visiting artists and lecturers.

The next jewelry sale will be Dec. 13 to 15 in the Art Lofts Gallery at 111 N. Frances St. next to the Kohl Center.

The student organization functions as a forum for not only art students within the metals program at UW–Madison to discuss projects, showcase and sell their work, but also for those outside of the art department who are majoring in fields ranging from anthropology to engineering.

Margaret Petri, who graduated with a bachelor of fine arts last spring with a focus on art metals and painting, helped transition Mad Madison Metals into a registered student organization designed to encourage students to stay in UW–Madison’s metals program and to increase awareness of the metals program.

“Our goal is to provide a community for art students and also to provide awareness and try to get people to take beginning metals other students who are in the art department,” Petri says. “We’ve had some wonderful students in the beginning classes who were in biology or physics and they love it. They take it as their fine arts requirement and do amazing work.”

While the group is small, the members are dedicated metalsmiths and artists, many of whom came into contact with metals in UW–Madison’s program.

“I took metals my first year and it was the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Mollie Ginther, a senior majoring in metals and painting.

Ginther’s work focuses on a large scale. One of her pieces is a large harvest helmet made from brass and copper. Turning a crank produces music and drops seeds.

Club member Alexandra Port, a senior majoring in French and art, valued a class project that required them to recreate an object to make it smaller or bigger by a certain percentage. Port made a replica of a pair of antique safety glasses.

“It was one of the most difficult things that I’ve ever done but also one of the most rewarding,” Port says. “It literally took me all semester to finish them. It was definitely a lot more than I can chew but I learned a lot.”

Gudziak is also working with Ginther and club member Joey Zeller, a bachelor of fine arts senior and anthropology major as well, raising vases from flat sheets of metal by using only a hammer. Gudziak estimates together they have invested about 100 hours in the project. They haven’t finished yet.

Zeller says the techniques he uses stick with him more than any particular project he has worked on. He said he loves lapidary work, which involves cutting stones.

“It’s just really cool all the things that you can do with and to metal,” Zeller says.