Feast of Fire
O love! O fire! -- Alfred Tennyson
Brandon Fernandez
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The sky is falling, dampening a quiet, industrial road along the southwest border of Berkeley and creating oily reflections in the drizzling light. A pair of railroad tracks meander off into the darkness at an odd angle to the road, glistening faintly, the cool metallic scent of rust and disuse mingling with the warm chalky smell of city pavement in the rain. There is the faintest odor of barbecue. Down the railroad tracks, toward the hubbub of Ashby Street, on the side of an otherwise easily missed road, two midsize demons with spindly legs and red-hot jowls stand near a brick oven, baring their teeth and smoldering in the mist. A small host of leather-clad minions sustains the fires as "blacksmith" chefs wearing little crowns of flame feed the demon barbecues and gape-mouthed oven hunks of tandoori chicken and handmade pizzas. Periodically, a troupe of lithesome succubi, bound in scarlet fabric and tantalizing veils, emerges from the reddish glow of a nearby loading dock to carry food back to the merrymakers within. This is called "Dining With Dante," Act 1 of Fire Feast 2000, a benefit for the Crucible.
From the medieval Latin word crucibulum, "crucible" is defined as a vessel in which metal or glass is heated to liquid form; or a severe test of patience and belief; or a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause change. TheCrucible is all those things, and a little bit more. The 6,000-square-foot brick warehouse is "an educational collaboration of art, industry, and community," and the avatar of co-founder Michael Sturtz, a 30-year-old craftsman and artist from the Bay Area who wandered as far as Italy in search of adroit instruction in stone and metal. Dissatisfied with the cost and proficiency of art school, Sturtz began teaching classes out of his own studio and hosting "Bronzework Barbecues" at his home, bringing together sculptors and metalworkers from all over the Bay Area, slowly building the community that would eventually fuel Crucible, a nonprofit space in which artisans can execute and teach their craft outside the confines of a traditional scholastic hierarchy.
"An artist working on his own doesn't have much of a chance," says Sturtz, a stolid-looking gent with a goatee, leather top hat, and tails. "Not everyone can afford welders, ceramic kilns, or even raw materials, much less a large enough space to operate. We needed to work collectively to build something sustainable."
At barely a year old, the Crucible has already reached capacity, with more than 300 students taking dirt-cheap evening classes in everything from basic home repair and introductory welding to kinetic sculpture, glass casting, architectural ceramics, and the vanishing arts of stone carving and blacksmithing. The Crucible's nonprofit status, and direct connection to the Materials Reuse Warehouse, allows teachers and students access to a fairly constant flow of donations, from industrial materials that may have otherwise found their way to the trash heap to a $30,000 forklift. In exchange, students and teachers often donate their time to their benefactors, making cast-bronze models for clients or showing shop foremen how to change the oil in their machines. With some pride, Sturtz talks about elevator repairmen and fabricators who take welding classes at Crucible, perhaps discovering something beyond welding in the process. The collusion of art and industry is two-thirds of the equation; the final third is community, something already thriving within the Crucible walls.
"I may have struck the match," says Sturtz, "but it took off on its own. It's a group venture. The space is here, what people do with it is up to them. Teachers help demo the facilities, build their own workshops, solicit materials donations, and find students."
Success -- not necessarily of the monetary sort; teachers here, as anywhere, work more than they should and, as executive director, Sturtz receives income only from the workshops he teaches -- has led the Crucible to plan daytime classes. Already, groups from Pixar, UC Berkeley, the San Francisco Art Institute, and a Buddhist monastery (where monks want to learn foundry skills to build large-scale Buddhas) have expressed interest, but the Crucible's real excitement centers on community outreach programs, headed by 23-year-old Jessica Sucher, that include vocational summer programs for 15- to 18-year-olds and involvement with high school art programs.
Fire Feast 2000 will raise seed money, and temperatures.
Stepping out of the rain, into the ruddy glow of the Crucible, I am wrapped in the arm of a masked woman wearing a dress accented by sequins of flame.
"It's all about fire," she says with husky implication. "Michael [Sturtz] is a modern-day Prometheus. Bringing fire to the people."
It's a characterization that would, no doubt, embarrass him, but tonight the Crucible and its characters do seem a little larger than life. The walls vibrate with the subterranean rumble of Tuvan throat singers, masterfully layered into ambient stratums by DJ Vordo; candlelight flickers off every surface; large, shimmering banquet tables (under the right lighting, industrial tinfoil goes a long way) hold stalks of crimson wheat arranged in vases made of bright orange kumquats; near the "stage," fire rips through the rib cage of a Hadean skeleton, cast in bronze by Sturtz; a giant "disposable" lighter blazes on the floor near Jacqueline Burns, founder of Work of Art catering, who stands over a flaming cauldron serving spicy Thai soup in edible Gypsy pepper bowls; behind three red welding screens, Burns' staff works furiously while David Andres' "Fire Vortex" swirls nearby inside a giant glass beaker; and at the far end of the building, near the endless supply of red wine, two more chefs flash-flame tequila prawns over the glowing warehouse crucible, in a wok fabricated from an old plowshare.
