Photo gallery: Pouring molten iron into art

Professor Wayne Potratz
Professor Wayne Potratz, left, who is retiring after 45 years of teaching art at the University of Minnesota, hangs out near the cupola during an iron pour Friday, Apr. 25, 2014 at the Regis Center for Art.
Jennifer Simonson/MPR News

When you handle molten iron in a blazing furnace nearing 2,500 degrees, "you have to kind of know what you are doing." Wayne Potratz made that point clear as he and his students Friday transformed liquid metal into art at the University of Minnesota's foundry. It was the art department's 45th Annual Iron Pour, an event that turns the foundry into a friendly, Hades kind of a place.

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