John Robert Craft’s Fire Etchings on Display at OCC’s Doyle Arts Pavilion through Dec. 3

Orange Coast College’s Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion has invited artist and alchemist John Robert Craft to display his work in “Fire Etchings,” an exhibit that will run through Dec. 3.

Craft — who grew up on a West Texas cattle ranch and whose experience with blacksmithing was at age four — has studied metallurgy, casting and fabrication, and has an intense fascination with the processes of transformation. His artwork is a series of modern alchemical experiments using basic elements: metal, fire, air, water and wood. Craft creates cast metal sculptures as mark-making tools, and his manipulation of these sculptures is recorded on steel printing plates, creating paper prints that function as both intriguing, rich designs and as documentation of the alchemical journey.

“The display of objects, printing plates and prints, all bound together in an investigation of form, evokes something beyond static contemplation of a finished, immoveable object,” says Doyle Arts Pavilion Curator Kim Garrison Means. “It reveals something about the birth, life, and death of all forms and materials, revealing something of the alchemy of life itself.”

In Diamondback, Craft cast an 840-pound iron sculpture and heated it atop a steel etching plate to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. The areas of contact between the two objects protected the plate, while the exposed areas developed significant heat erosion, biting into the metal and creating a textured surface.

The resulting print — named for the snakes often found at his ranch — is as beautiful as it is thought provoking. Shown together with the cast iron sculpture and printing plate, Craft shows us the relationship between tool, process, chance and outcome.

Influenced by Minimalism, Craft’s work is reductive and process oriented. His printing inks are custom blended from metal oxide pigments, combining iron, manganese, hematite and graphite to create ochre, charcoal and umber hues. Craft describes the content of his work as “the imagery of chance,” and he states that “in the beginning the objects drove the imagery, and as the experiments progressed, the imagery began to drive the objects.”

An opening reception for “Fire Etchings” will be held on Oct. 27 from 5–7:30 p.m., and the public is invited to attend. The Doyle Arts Pavilion is open from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. on Wednesdays. For more information visit www.orangecoastcollege.edu/artspavilion