This continues our report from 7/28/08 on the foundry bell creations ...
Once the stylus tools have been used to mark designs into the sand, the cope and drag sand blocks are put back together. Now, negative space exists where the aluminum pattern was. Removing the snap-flask reveals the cube of sand, with spru holes through the top. A metal sleeve providing extra support during the pour is fitted around the sand cube.

In the foreground, bronze ingots glint in the sun while the propane-fired furnace melts others inside a silicon-carbide crucible vessel. While bronze as a material (comprised primarily of copper alloys) melts at 1700F, this furnace heats the metal all the way to 2200F, enabling the bronze to maintain its liquid state long enough to do successive pours.

Thus, a series of sand blocks in sleeves are laid across the deck of the Foundry Apse, awaiting the pour.
While two artists balance and pour the crucible of molten metal using foundry tongs, others stand ready to pitch sand onto any stray pools of bronze.
The melted metal enters the spru hole and follows a channel to the cavities formed by the aluminum patterns. In only a few minutes the metal cools back to solid state and soon enough the bells can be broken out of the sand molds.
This report continues on 8/1/08.

Crafting the bronze wind bells is a labor intensive process.
Presently the Foundry Apse is workspace for about five artists who shape the sand molds and pour the molten liquid metal to cast Soleri Original bells.
Over the next few postings, we will present them at work on the stages of bell production.
While the bronze ingots (bars of metal) are melting at 2200F in the propane-heated furnace, the foundry artists get to work shaping the sand molds. Damp sand gets packed around aluminum bell patterns (there are about 38 different styles / shapes in the collection) inside a 2-piece wood and metal frame called a snapflask (the top half is called the cope and the bottom half the drag).

After agitation on the pneumatic press, the snapflask frame is opened and the aluminum pattern removed. The cope block of sand, which reads the outside of the aluminum pattern, has indentations in it, while the drag side has mounds of sand since it read the interior of the aluminum pattern.

At this point, the artists use stylus tools to impress the designs into the cope sand. These become the images that are seen on the outside of the cast bells. Each artist tends to have her / his own renditions of the classic Soleri standard motifs, so it is interesting to observe the unique creations being made.
In the 7/30/08 posting we will continue to explore the foundry work and follow the bell production through to the next stage.

Welcome to the July 20. Workshop participants.
[top from left]:
Andy Suaverdez [2 weeks], Melissa Garmann, Maki Yamamoto, David Robert and Arianne Gelardin [seminar week], and Daiki Iwata.
[middle from left]:
Danielle Gould, Adam Justin [seminar week], Marco Gissara, Arianna Urban and Sonnik Vedel.
[bottom from left]:
Natalie Logan, Raffaele Elba, Christina Lonigro [2 weeks], Carola Stagnotto [2 weeks], Robert Meravi [3 weeks] and Marta d'Alessandro.

ITALIAN NIGHT at Arcosanti, once again, was a great success. A lively crowd of visitors and many alumni enjoyed a lovely evening that began with a tour of the site and a delicious dinner served in the Vaults.
Menu consisted of
antipasto, insalata condimento alla Soleri, pasta estiva [dramatically served from wheel barrows by Paolo Soleri], Piccata di pollo per i peccatori, melanzane ripiene, fagiolini con rosmarino, and for dessert gelato al limone e biscottini.

The evenings program continued in the Colly Soleri amphitheater with a medley of songs from the operas of Giacomo Puccini, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mascagni and Gioaccino Rossini.
Pianist VITORIA KIRSCH explained each of the pieces, the setting and circumstance as well as the character portrayed by the performers.

Dynamic voices of the evening were Soprano SUZAN HANSON and Bass-Baritone DEAN ELZINGA.
Suzan Hanson combines careers in Opera, Theater, and Musical theater, and was thrilled to be back on the Arcosanti stage.
For Susan, 2008 began in Verona as Pat Nixon in "Nixon in China", followed by a reprisal of Eurydice in "Orpheus X" for the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Blessed with a voice of exquisite beauty and power, which has been lauded by critics and audience members alike, it certainly delighted this audience.

Superb singer and actor, bass-baritone DEAN ELZINGA, is regularly welcomed on concert and opera stages, often in contemporary works requiring his unique dramatic conviction, presence and assured musicianship. He enjoyed international acclaim for Peter Maxwell Davies’s fiendishly difficult Eight Songs for a Mad King, performing it in New York and Cleveland, with Jonathan Sheffer conducting the Eos and Red Orchestras, respectively. He sang the title role in Harold Farberman’s A Song of Eddie and Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand at New York’s Bard Festival, and Eliot Carter’s What next? at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Music was followed by Italian Night Pictograph 2008 "How the West was Peaked", once again choreographed by Tomiaki Tamura and performed by staff members Matteo Di Michele, Alex Dixon, Erin Jeffries, Jeffrey Michal and Carina Trendafilova.
"The Hydrocarbon economy has propelled our progress for the last 100 years and seemingly reached its peak. Where do we go from here looking at the next 100 years."
The theme was portrayed in a shadowplay on the mesa across from the Arcosanti site, to the music of Ennio Morricone, Falls from "Mission" and Nini Rosso "Il Silenzio".

The ITALIAN NIGHT event is the best visited event of the year, usually between 300 and 350 visitors come to enjoy a delicious dinner in the dramatic setting of the vaults.
What few visitors can realize is how much preparation it takes for our crew of staff, workshop participants and volunteers, most of whom have not been part of something like this before.
On top of which, many of the July 20. workshop participants arrived the night before and during the day, so this was their introduction to the Arcosanti experience.
This is an event that takes all hands to make possible, and all hands rose to the challenge and performed an admirable task.
There are many photos and only room for a few.
The gigantic dinner preparation was coordinated and executed by this years terrific chefs, Peter Lindgren and Carrie Krueger, who with calm and sparkling humor directed a staff of volunteers through days and nights of endless cutting and slicing and cooking and stuffing and cleaning in the tiny cafe kitchen.
[from upper left] Alumna Gypsy Kampel came for the day and individually fried all of the delicious Chicken Picata filets.
Carrie and Peter instruct the crew.

Each table setting in the vaults received plates of appetizers, fresh slices of bread and olive oil pressed from Arcosanti olives.
[from upper left] The crew formed assembly lines to distribute the prepared hors d'oeuvres on carefully washed leafs of lettuce and, then carried each tray to be kept cool in the walk-in refriderator.
Tables and chairs were set up in the vaults, 350 sets of silverwear were rolled the night before.
Tomiaki Tamura prepared the vaults serving crew in the all of the tasks that will make the dinner a smooth operation. Besides the actual serving of dinner, all of the little things that have to be thought of, like filling glasses with ice, refilling the salad bowls, making sure there is enough coffee and a myriad of detals.

The guest have arrived. The pasta is wheeled into position and Paolo Soleri graciously served the pasta from a wheel barrow.
To accommodate serving many people the quickest way possible, the vaults were set up in such a way that four teams served the dinner from islands between all of the tables, and it was a super delicious dinner.

Much other preparation is not visible here, like the weeding of the parking lot, tackling prickly tumbleweed that had grown to gigantic proportion with lots of monsoon moisture. And the preparation of the theater, cleaning and scrubbing and brushing and wiping 350 chairs. And the extra cleaning of all of the paths and common rooms for our visitors.
This event was made possible by the efforts of a terrific crew.
Report continues on 7/23/08.

The June 15. workshop participants graduated.

Congratulations to:
[from left] Lindsay Marsh, Todd Findley, Brendan Siegl, Tyler Scott, Toa Rivera, Mark Moynihan, TJ Bogan, Jonathan Schafer, Rebecca Brown, Mateo Mir Bashiri and Magda Lojewska.

We last reported on the construction effort at the Visitors Center entrance on 7/2 and 7/4/08.
A thick telephone cable intersects the curve from stage 3 to stage 4 of the ramp, and the crew has to dig a deeper trench to protect this cable.

A few days later and workshop participants TJ Bogan and Mateo Mir Bashiri are leveling stage 5 of the handicap ramp.

And this morning the crew is working on the last part and stage 6 of the zig-zag ramp that will lead from the visitors parking lot to the Crafts III visitors center, and make access more comfortable for physically challenged visitors.

On June 30th, 2008, Paolo Soleri was featured as a guest speaker at the 23rd UIA World Congress in Turin, Italy. The Congress takes place every three years and brings together thousands of architects and architecture students from countries throughout the world. Debates, exhibitions, visits, and festivals provide the unique platform for the exchange of cultural contacts between fellow professionals and students.


Architect Iolanda Lima, author of the book “Soleri, Architecture as Human Ecology”, Alessandro Bardino, and Arcosanti resident Matteo Di Michele helped with Paolo Soleri’s presentation at the World Congress, which included a complete slide show of Cosanti, Arcosanti, and many other Soleri projects.

400 people attended Paolo Soleri’s well-received presentation.

This morning, on an unusual cloudy and cool day, the construction crew continued work on the block wall around the Ceramic studio kiln area.
Part of the crew mixed concrete on the slab above the kiln area moved the mix by shute to waiting wheel barrows.
At the top is crew chief Ron Chandler and workshop participant Jonathan Schafer. Mark Moynihan at the shute with the cameraman from a visiting French film team.

The crew has nicely stacked another three layers of blocks and workshoppers Toa Rivera and Mark carefully fill the cavities of the blocks with concrete.
Tucker Zenski uses a trawel to get rid of excess concrete.

Toa Rivera at work.
Workshopper TJ Bogan and crew Jeff Buderer finish and detail the surface of the wall.

We continue our report on the construction efforts along the visitors path.
Part of the upgrade, of the Crafts III visitors center entrance, is a block wall that will shelter the Ceramics studio kiln area.
Construction staff Jeff Buderer instructs workshopparticipants TJ Bogan.

The blocks are stacked and will now be reinforced with concrete.
Concrete is mixed on a slab above the kiln area and slides down a shoot. Up above are crew chief Ron Chandler with landscaping crew Tucker Zenski and workshopper Rebecca Brown.
Workshopper Mark Moynihan helps the sliding concrete into a wheelbarrow.
Workshoppers TJ Bogan and Jonathan Schafer.

The crew carefully shovels concrete into the block cavities.
The wall is reinforced with intermittent steel rebar.
Jeff is using a piece of rebar to stir the concrete mixture to help it to settle.
The block came from Yavapai Block in Prescott.
Report will continue with another three levels of block.

Exciting news from the Soleri Archives.
We received a whole new collection of original Soleri drawings from the about 1940 to around 1948.
While cleaning out a little used back closet in the Soleri residence, his daughters discovered a whole stack of drawings, books and assorted items of archival interest.

Archive Director Tomiaki Tamura looks through a series of beautiful watercolor drawings. He identified several series of drawings as part of some of Soleri's school projects already housed in the archives. Most of the drawings are from Paolo Soleri's time at the Polytechnico in Torino, Italy, where he received his degree in 1946.

Archives crew set up a camera and filmed Soleri's reminiscence over his early efforts. Tomiaki interviewed Paolo about specific items, especially a Sketchbook from those school years.
Italian Project coordinator Matteo Di Michele helps translate some of the items.

- INDEPENDENCE DAY -
This continues the report from 7/02/08.
June 15. workshop participants, with guidance of Landscaping coordinator Ron Chandler, work on the handicap access ramp.

After all of the preparatory work with a backhoe, there are still some large rocks that have to be either moved or demolished, to make room for the foundations for the concrete ramp.
Workshoppers Todd, Jonathan and Mateo are using their combined strength to uproot one of the largest boulders.

Todd and Jonathan relocate the heavy stone. This is hard work, especially in 100 degree heat.
The group made good progress, filling some of the dips in the gently sloped ramp, to provide a good foundation for the eventual concrete walk-way.

This continues the report from 6/30/08.
On the zig-zag ramp under construction, Landscaping coordinator Ron Chandler expertly maneuvers the largest rocks with help of a backhoe.

After the backhoe work, Director Tomiaki Tamura and Ron survey the terrain once more.

Tomiaki and Ron determined the exact gradation of the path and layed guide lines for the construction crew.
Repord continues on 7/4/08.