Making art out of metal – it can be a complicated process, and to make a sculpture out of iron can be even tougher as the raw material needs to be heated up to three thousand degrees. That process has been mastered by Detroit artist Jay Elias, who specializes in making things from iron, a medium with connections to the Motor City’s industrial past.

Elias, a Marine Corps veteran with post-traumatic stress, started casting metal a little over a decade ago after spending time in prison for assault. He started Evolution Art Studio in Detroit while mastering the art of casting sculptures out of iron.

Today, he’s helping revive a tradition of using iron to make art. In February, Elias facilitated a metal pouring workshop at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, an activity that’s not so common in the Detroit area. The College for Creative Studies does a couple of iron pours each year, but this was the first for Cranbrook in several decades.

Elias also recently visited the Carrie Blast Furnaces in Pittsburgh, a formative site for Pittsburgh’s Iron Age from the 1880s, to create a new piece titled “Unfinished Business” that will live in the Iron Garden on the property. The Carrie Blast Furnaces were shut down nearly 40 years ago, but the group Rivers of Steel has re-engaged with the space, inviting artists and metalworkers like Elias to use it as a backdrop for new iron pours.

One Detroit’s Bill Kubota joined Elias to learn more about the resurgence of metalwork as an artform and talk about his artistic process. Plus, Kubota talks with Jay’s son Robert Elias; Cranbrook Academy of Art Head of Metalsmithing Iris Eichenberg; Cranbrook metalsmithing student Fanni Somogyi; Amanda Coe, a digital marketer for Cranbrook; Laura Vermilye, an artist and the host of “The podCast Iron”; Pittsburgh metal sculptor Michael Walsh; and Paige Henry of Rivers of Steel.