Todd Erickson and ‘Passage of Knowledge’
Earlier this month we had the pleasure of catching up with Todd Erickson, Director of Exhibitions at College for Creative Studies.
We were delighted Erickson agreed to chat with us about the exhibition he curated at CCS Center Galleries, as there is no better steward of the school’s history, especially for its oldest curriculum: the foundry. You know we can never resist a good stewardship project.
Before we go any further, here are the exhibition details, do make a point to visit!
Passage of Knowledge: A History of the CCS Foundry
On view at through January 31, 2025
@ CCS — Center Galleries
301 Frederick St. Detroit, MI 48202
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11am- 5pm
The following conversation with Erickson took place in the exhibition. Often, we meander. From Erickson’s seemingly infinite record of historical accounts to our observations (and his reactions) to the work around us. So it is fitting we should start where our curiosity led us…
Work by Stephany Latham
IMW: This is beautiful. Who is this?
TE: Isn’t that wonderful? Stephany Latham—she’s really a weaver. Well, really, she’s a sculptor, but she does a ton of weaving, so her interest lies in bringing that practice to the foundry and to transform textiles into bronze. So a transformation process which you know is very mechanical, and obviously in casting we need to replace one thing for the other, but there is also meaning, if you want to get into it in a deep way… and I think she does, because they’re remnants, they're not off of the loom. They’re kind of impermanent scraps existing in a particular moment of decay and the casting process preserves that moment. Look at these three. See, that shadow? It is a casting of a single string [which is technically very challenging], I think that’s really cool!
IMW: I really love Stephany Latham’s work. There are so many interesting works in this exhibition. And stories! Tell, me what do these artists, together, represent?
TE: People who have been in the [“Casting in the Foundry”] class…Everybody’s been in the class, but these are some who I felt took it a little further, stayed with it longer—I thought maybe had bigger objectives. But I’ve had over a thousand students in that class.
[Side Note: “Casting in the Foundry” has been taught by Erickson for more than two decades. Curious? More information / registration here.]
As I said in my speech at the opening: “These artists, and over a thousand others, including: poets, painters and potters, cabinet makers, journalists, designers and firemen, scientists, teachers, doctors and dentists, economists, Rastas and one owner of an NFL team have shared knowledge, fostered innovation, and contributed to a creative environment that supports artistic growth.” The exhibition you see here, it is just the head of a pin.
It took me two years to curate this exhibition, I started with a thousand people, narrowed it to a hundred, then to the 25 people here. And no small part of this was the impetus to share history that only I know because everybody’s croaking.
So much history, come over here for a second. Our president in the 50s and 60s was Walter Midener and he was the teacher of Jay Holland, who made these two pieces.
And Jay Holland was chair of our fine arts department and sculpture department for like 40 years. So he was here forever, he taught everybody else in the room, if not directly [then] through me. He was a figurative artist, but did a lot of abstract as well—if you see his pieces around the area, they’re almost always figurative. So he was the guy that would have our models, had everyone standing around learning anatomy. Every Wednesday, every Saturday, he just taught, taught, taught with a model there and tried to get people to see. Like if you can see what the model really is—the figure—then you can make anything.
Jay had students in the 60s who then became mentors of mine because they were a little bit older than me—John Piet, David Petrakovitz, Hugh Timlin (he has a chalice over here, and he’s got this figure). So these were all older guys when I came in, in like the early 80s. And then I came in and I started to pass down the knowledge I knew to the rest of the folks in the room.
And some of them, I should point out, I didn’t pass knowledge down to—they were fellow faculty, like Joseph Wesner. We were buddies, but I don’t think he would accept that I gave him any knowledge, haha.
IMW: Well, you’re here telling the story now [laughs].
TE: [laughs] Yeah exactly. So…all of a certain generation, including Robert Bielat, I meant to mention earlier. Oh and Sergio De Giusti. He was Jay’s first student when Jay taught at the DIA in the basement. Sergio was a junior high kid then—now he’s 80!
Yeah, so this exhibition is a sort of passage, and we don’t write stuff down, so it’s going to be lost as soon as my kicker goes.
IMW: We’re writing it now! We’re here for you, Todd!
TE: You’re so kind! So, anyway, I got to come in and I was really fortunate that I was able to inherit all this knowledge and history. That’s all I can say is that I’m very fortunate. I got to work with people, like over here…
… and he points to something we can’t quite recall as we furiously write down the decades of history Erickson told in less than 2 minutes…then back to looking around the exhibition…
IMW: This one feels special…
TE: Henry Roberts. The unique thing about that is no power tools touched that piece. He would come in with his own hacksaw, his own set of files, sandpaper, steel wool…He was an old modeler from England, then worked for GM. But you know, it was hand, hand, hand. It was hand-made in wax, and we would cast it, and then it’s all hand-finished. It’s just so cool, because everything else in here you can see involves a lot of power tools and noise and debris and scary tactics. And he was very generous; he would clean up after people and take care of the younger students because he was an old guy.
And this is John Rizzo who runs the school’s woodshop, I’ve known him since he was a student here. One of my favorite pieces. It really needs a spotlight on the blue glass…
Work by John Rizzo
And that’s another John Piet. He was here forever, went to OCC Macomb and taught there his whole career. They’re very gestural—they’re figurative, but very gestural. The one over there, third in, is completely figurative, but it’s not. Right? He’s got a big piece at Southfield Road and, maybe, Ten Mile? Orange? And it’s the same kind of gestural thing, looks kind of drunk, it’s kind of fallen. Went like this [gestures]…
Gary Kulak was a student of Michael Hall’s way before I was at Cranbrook. Then he went on to teach at Kingswood—Cranbrook Kingswood—yeah, so he had a good teaching career out there. Makes chairs.
Another John Rizzo here. And then this is Graem Whyte. Graem Whyte teaches in our degree program. It’s fiberglass and then bronze in the center. The whole thing is only 35, 40 pounds. Needs a large hotel lobby, doesn’t it? Or office building. Graem is real good, and he’s very adventurous.
IMW: So back to the thousand people, you really whittled your way down and yet there is so much represented here.
TE: Yeah, I’ve had over a thousand students, but I can’t remember all their names. Too many.
This is Sue Linburg—I taught with her here too. And she studied with David Smith in Indiana, and she was married to Morris Brose, so she was Susanna Brose Linburg…We got [these] from her now-husband—she’s deceased—and he’s in Arizona.
IMW: I have been very curious, and frankly sad about Sue Linburg’s legacy being somewhat forgotten. She’s one that really should get more attention. There’s no history, there’s no market history either. Doing shows like this though, it helps. It really helps. Documenting the work, documenting these histories and making sure they’re recorded.
What are you hoping people take away from the exhibition? Especially students.
TE: I think that the foundry exists. That the foundry is a thing you can do, and it’s not all about gears, and trains, and the big three. You know, that it really can be used for artwork.
IMW: This class is on Saturdays? And anyone can audit it?
TE: Well you have Saturday in the shop and Sunday as well, because we let people come for the lab time.
IMW: [laughs] So I can be a student of yours? How long is the class?
TE: Yeah, and you have two days a week, it’s pretty amazing. It’s ten weeks, $395. And it’s not full yet—we start the 25th [of January]. It’s a neat opportunity.
IMW: Yeah, we will promote that the class exists. I mean that’s a main objective of the exhibition, really…
TE: Yeah, I wanted to share the work, I wanted to share people’s individual personal journeys, because that’s super important.
IMW: You know, I like the stories of mentorship in that you are now really the only steward of all of these stories, but it’s all about the community over time.
TE: And specifically, that community when you get into the foundry, you know, it’s big and loud and scary, and there’s a lot of fire and stuff…but we try to make everybody feel as comfortable and as important as we can so they’re empowered to want to do their work, and to make their work in front of a bunch of strangers. I mean, that’s the key to it—you gotta have people feel at home.
IMW: I mean, it’s such a bold action to do in front of a bunch of people.
TE: It is! You’re committing to something that’s gonna sit out there, something that’s going to cost a lot of money whether it turns out or not. But…that’s the community part, it’s really important that people feel safe, and that…they can be themselves. Because they’re working next door to someone they know or they don’t know, but they’re still another artist. They have a lot in common. And that just propels the whole thing forward.
So think of it like our pillars are community, and then innovation (because we do all this weird stuff that you don’t see at commercial foundries—Styrofoam and wood and plastics and the iron pour—just innovation’s crazy here), and then the last pillar…that holds the whole thing up is personal journey. Because people feel like, yeah, they can get in and dig around in their past or in their future or in their aspirations, and they can really feel comfortable enough to make art. You can see it’s art that’s meaningful too, not just some flowers in a vase—I love flowers. Yeah, people really try to get into issues and concepts beyond images, I believe. Or incorporated in the images. And that’s really important to me. So these three pillars, they hold up this big beam, and then on the beam it says that “Every foundry rat’s”—and I call them foundry rats because I don’t want to call them foundrymen, they’re not, a lot of them are women—so “Every foundry rat’s success depends on the others.” And that’s because when we’re working in there, making molds, helping each other, we’re shoveling sand, we’re moving things or we’re melting metal or we’re pouring metal into the molds, we all have to behave appropriately as if it’s our work, our child, or whatever. You really are dependent on everybody else that your work is going to turn out well and you’re going to succeed. And that’s a cool thing,
IMW: That is a really cool thing.
TE: That’s a cool feeling. It’s a good feeling. It’s also a good feeling to be in your studio completely removed doing your own thing. Independently. But co-dependence, or, just call it communal, communal – that’s a wonderful thing and we do it all the time in the foundry, because you have to. So it just sort of, it gets ingrained.
IMW: Well, I think that’s a really important reminder today, because there’s just so much we—we live in a world that is really now designed toward self-isolation, people just working on their own, remotely…
TE: Yeah, pick the food off the conveyor belt. I know, weird. Here we’re forced into, like, we just have to help each other.
IMW: And it’s a really beautiful story.
TE: And so if I’m in the foundry—pretend this is the foundry—and I turn [around], I have no idea what they’re doing back there. And if somebody starts to do something dangerous, guess what? Another student says “Oh, no, no, we better do it this way.” So they teach others, and that’s really fun to see because that gives everybody, that lifts everybody up…Yeah, so lifting everybody up, making people comfortable, and having their community. It’s kind of a neat thing that’s rare. This is the oldest curriculum at the school. So you wonder why, and is it because of that?
IMW: Well, it’s so communal…yet you look at all these things, and they are so vastly different. Sure, they’re inspired by each other, but nobody is trying to be someone else.
TE: I agree. Even these folks who are enamored with the figure, they wouldn’t do things just like Jay did. They would go their own way, take their own path. You know, that’s what it’s all about. It’s our personal growth, our narratives…
IMW: One of the things that I love about this exhibition which is really from the nature of the materials, is just the color – it’s just such a soothing palette of all of these…
TE: Pretty much always green…Green or brown.
IMW: Right? The greens and the browns and like the blues—there’s something so soothing about it on the one hand, but also it’s… yeah?
TE: Is it because of the age? Is that why it’s soothing? We just trust the idea that the patina being old.
IMW: Well, that’s interesting, I don’t know, it could be that. The colors themselves are very soothing, but it’s also interesting…In a way it's this unifying—this one unifying trait, right?—where there’s, to your point, so many concepts being explored, and there're so many styles that people are engaging. And yet, there’s this beautiful cohesion from, really, just the nature of the material, like that physical property of the color of the materials. And when you talk about people, you know, coming from all these different perspectives and wanting to create all these different things, working together in the foundry—you can see how there’s this sort of universal language. They’re just discussing each other’s ideas, you know? And I love seeing that in studios: People who are exploring totally different things artistically getting excited, trying to help each other out, brainstorming how to achieve…
TE: Through the commonality of cast metal.
IMW: Yeah. So I feel like the color palette is a great embodiment of that.
TE: Yeah, that’s a really good observation. [laughs] I would have had that in my speech if I had noticed that.
IMW: What has been the most fulfilling part for you? Now that you’re here, and it’s been two years in the making...
TE: Getting to see some old friends, I think. There’s also resolution that it came out pretty much how I wanted it to. That’s a relief.
IMW: That is a relief, and that can be rare.
TE: Well, it was harder to track down work than I thought. Like John Piet—he and his wife have both passed on, and a collector in California bought everything John had left. So I’m like, “How do I get that back from California? I don’t have a shipping budget.” I even had pieces from Arizona, so it was a trip getting this stuff…No place else exotic…Just the other side of [Michigan] and up North…But no, it was rough.
IMW: So this really was a massive effort to bring together this important history of the school.
TE: Yeah, harder than I thought. And I mean, I’ve had a lot of shows at CCS, because I’ve been working there forever doing shows, but wow. If it’s just your own thing and you gotta gather it all together—that was rough, but fun.
IMW: How much of this work is from private collections that you borrowed?
TE: 6 or 7 pieces, yeah, and then quite a few are from the artists, so I’m going to be taking back a lot of those to people who aren’t as spry [laughs]. Just because I might as well throw them in my car…
IMW: And some are from your collection?
TE: Two of the Jay Holland’s are from my collection, yeah. I wish I had more stuff!
IMW: I mean this is an exhibition that could be twice the size, up for a year, right? That’s so interesting…I really did not realize that the foundry is the oldest program in the school. It’s like the anchor, no pun intended.
TE: It’s just it’s kept going, everybody kept wanting to do it. There were no breaks, and I don’t know—it was going on before I got here. John Van Amerongen, who made the cross and the sturgeon, he was doing it before I was here, before John was Hugh Timlin…so I’m 41 years, I think the whole thing is like 50, 55 years…It has been chugging along. You know, the technology hasn’t changed that much. Most of the stuff is thousands of years old, these techniques, so we’re just keeping it alive so people don’t forget.
IMW: Do you have a specific favorite memory in your time working in the foundry?
TE: Oh, I think the first iron pour, when Julius Smith came from University of Iowa—he got us started on iron pouring. ‘84, that was really a gas. There were so many important artists there to see that. I mean, Detroit just turned out to see that thing. They knew Julius was famous, and it was…iron pours are sort of commonplace now, but back then they were not. You know, that was really a cool time.
IMW: People would come and watch?
TE: Yeah, people would come and watch [inaudible]. Tons of kids came to watch. Some kids got a little too crazy. They got on the roof…I was too busy to keep an eye on them. A fun time, people came from out of town for it. We’ve done it every year since then—some years twice.
IMW: When’s it going to be this year?
TE: March 28th. You see, you tap this cupola and 200 pounds of iron come out and then you wait about 12 minutes until it’s full again and you’re tapping it and the 200 pounds of iron come out into the ladle and you take it to the molds and pour it in and then about 12, 15 minutes later you’re doing it again. It’s really fun. Really fun, so it’s a whole lot of molten iron. As opposed to a bronze pour – we have a crucible that holds 250 pounds, it takes two, almost two hours to heat it up, we pour it and it’s over like that [snaps].
IMW: There’s no theatrics involved in that one.
TE: Well, it’s fast. It’s fun, but it’s fast. Whereas the iron one goes on and on and on and on. To the point of exhaustion. And what’s happening, you’re thinking “These kids are getting free metal, these kids are getting all this stuff poured and it’s not costing them thousands of dollars.”
IMW: Well it’s not free if they’re doing all that work, though [laughs].
TE: Well, right, yes. I guess nothing’s ever free, but way cheaper, so I’m glad for that. To experiment…
IMW: Well that’s cool. I honestly did not know that even happened. We’ll write about that too so people connect with that and want to come out.
TE: Okay, good, wonderful, sure. Because it’s right on our alley behind the school, so people even drive down in the alleys—a lot of times cops stop in the alley to keep an eye on us.
IMW: That’s cool, I mean, I feel like that’s the type of thing that we need more of these days: Connecting with these types of processes.
TE: Yeah, it’s fun, it’s so much fun, the communal thing.
IMW: Just to see how much it brings the community together, just how much time and labor goes into these things that people don’t ever even think about as being a thing that people do. When you’re removed from the process of making….
TE: It’s hard, and I’m lucky I get to be a part of that. It’s fleeting, but you can see a look on somebody’s face that you’ve never seen in your life before. They’re just so happy that they did that and they didn’t get hurt.
IMW: Honestly I would be too if I had to do it myself!
TE: It’s really incredible. Yeah. Because people are kind of reserved, usually? Especially college kids. But yeah, you see this look on their face, like, “Okay we got through to them.” They felt all of the things that build the foundation and legacy of the foundry.
[Note: This conversation has been edited from the original transcript for brevity and clarity.]