In 2025, while serving as Visiting Assistant Professor and Interim Sculpture Program Coordinator at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), Egnater organized the annual iron pour. The event was led by students in ART 372 Mold Making and Casting Digital Foundry in Sculpture and brought together participants from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Western Michigan University, and the Chicago Crucible.
Earlier that year, Egnater and several GVSU students attended the National Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art and Practices in Birmingham, Alabama in preparation for the pour. Students gained experience working on two pour crews and attended panels and presentations throughout the conference.
Documentation at Grand Valley State University by Claire West
Documentation at Grand Valley State University by Kendra Mills
In 2022, Egnater participated in the 9th International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art in Berlin, Germany. With support from Alfred University and the Judson Leadership Center, she assisted Coral Penelope Lambert’s iron pour performance at the Industrie Museum in Brandenburg, exhibited work at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft in Berlin, and organized a panel for the conference.
The panel, titled Material Pairings: Looking Beyond Dichotomy, featured five artists who use cast iron with “other materials.” The panel addressed moments where cast iron is paired with “other materials,” and how the conversation often becomes gendered as hard/soft or masculine/feminine. To move beyond this dichotomy, we opened the conversation to ideas such as the contextual nature of iron, queering iron, and the inherent fragility of iron.
Documentation at the Industrie Museum by Sean Smuda
In 2021 and 2022, Egnater taught pewter casting workshops at Alfred University and the Ox School of Art and Artists’ Residencies. Students were asked to bring a series of found objects, which served as patterns for their molds. The workshops covered silicone mold making, pewter casting, and finishing techniques, guiding participants through the full process from object to completed form.
The following images document the Alfred University workshop.
Documentation by Kate Herron
In 2020, while employed as a metalshop and foundry technician at the College for Creative Studies, Egnater led the reconstruction of a cupolette, a project that began in winter 2020 and quickly became shaped by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As restrictions lifted, a small group moved forward with the 2021 spring iron pour. The cupolette has continued beyond the pandemic to support iron pours for larger public events.
The following images document a 2024 pour at the College for Creative Studies using the cupolette.
Documentation by Eric Perry
In 2018 and 2019, Egnater participated in the “We Build It” Residency at the repurposed Banner Tobacco Co. Building in Detroit, Michigan. In 2018, she hosted a sand mold workshop and organized the annual Halloween iron pour. In 2019, she facilitated a collaboration with De Peter Yi, a Walter B. Sanders Fellow in the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, to produce a series of architectural components and hardware.
Yi’s documentation at the Banner Tobacco Co. building features Egnater’s gas furnace “Ruby Red,” along with tongs and shanks she fabricated in 2017–2018.
Documentation by De Peter Yi