Arty Girl: Vesta's Kitchen at ASU Step Gallery

By Lilia Menconi

Liquid metal.

Okay, so the image above may not make you think of fine art right off the bat, but I'm assuming the students at ASU looked somewhat similar to this guy (what a great outfit) when they made their pieces for "Vesta's Kitchen" an exhibition at ASU that "examines the mythopoetics of molten metal".

I admit, I had to look up "mythopoetic" on Webster's Dictionary online. And now you get to learn a new word right along with me:

Myth`o`po`et´ic
a. 1. Making or producing myths or mythical tales.

Myth-making is a tall order, for sure. But the foundry program at ASU went for it with sculpture professor, Mary Neubauer leading the way. The project includes cast metal works in bronze, iron, copper, brass and aluminum as well as alloys of students' own creations. Each piece has an accompanying thematic essay - which is where the mythopoetic stuff comes in, I'm sure.

"Vesta's Kitchen" runs until Dec. 5, 2008 at Step Gallery, Northeast corner of 10th Street and University Drive (located just north of the ASU Art Museum Ceramics Research Center) open Monday - Thursday, 11:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., herbergercollege.asu.edu.