John Ward Knox thinks he and the Crucible Artist Residency are a perfect match.

The Karitane-based artist says he’s always been interested in “processes and craft and the skills it takes to make things”.

“So it seemed like a perfect opportunity for me to both have the freedom and ability to make uninterrupted for four months, but also to learn a new set of skills.”

John joins Dunedin-based artist Motoko Kikkawa in the second round of the residency pilot programme being run by the Hynds Foundation and Gillies MetalTech, at the Ōamaru foundry.

The two are already good friends after they met through the Dunedin music scene when John moved south from Auckland 12 years ago.

“I've known her for a decade-plus, so it's an easy relationship, which is good.”

Creativity has always been in John's DNA and what he has found most intriguing so far in the four weeks he has been at Gillies is learning about the properties of working with molten metal and all the “intricacies” that involves.

“Because there's so much problem solving involved in what they do in the foundry. So aside from the stuff that they have and have got all worked out, all of their solutions to casting they're all bespoke and they're all hugely interesting.

“There's so many different things that you have to keep in your mind's eye at any one time, like the way that metal flows. 

“You have to think of it as a liquid, rather than as solid, because obviously in its final form it becomes solid, but when you're actually making the moulds and making the patterns, you have to think about it being something that liquid has to flow through.

“So it's really nice just sort of getting in touch with that sort of metallurgical part of the process.”

Working with this medium is a rare opportunity that John appreciates many artists will never get to do, and others would perhaps shy away from.

“I don't think ever in my life I would have found myself doing this if they hadn't offered the possibility.

“Because it's not a traditional sculpting material . . . it has such hard parameters on what it can and can't do.

“Most people, when they're of an artistic bent, would want an intricate form and to not have to worry about all the things that need to happen with a two-part process.

One of John Ward Knox's planning sketches for his spiral staircase.

“So with the sand moulding where your object has to be able to come out easily, basically, you have to design what you're sculpting to the parameters of the process. And I think that's just something that would put a barrier between most artists engaging with this medium.

“But that's what I'm really enjoying about it, is tailoring what I hope to make, to the process,” he says.

John wants to test the boundaries of what he can achieve during his time at the foundry, and is working on a spiral staircase.

He wants it to be practical - an object that has function as well as artistic merit - but says foundry staff are “healthily sceptical”.

“Of maybe the ability of everyone involved, but specifically my ability, to get this project across the line. 

“Because it's not only a time constraint, a material constraint, a man-hours constraint, but also it's an engineering challenge.”

The goal is to have 15 steps - a complete rotation is 12 - and so far there is no “Plan B”, John says.

He has learned “a lot of what not to do”, but says testing the limits early on of what will and won't work is giving him the best tools to make the process a lot quicker when he has finalised his templates.

John is also learning to plan a lot further ahead than he is used to with his work, in terms of costs involved and feasibility over the time and effort this will take.

He is hoping to make each individual step as light as possible so they’re easier to work with and the work “doesn't end up costing a bomb”. 

The staircase appeals to John because it is practical, but also has beauty.

Iron has a similar appeal.

“Because it's only really got compressive strength. So it really only resists weight by compression, that's its primary material strength. 

“It doesn't have a lot of ductility or tensile strength or anything like that, so essentially, the art, like, you're engaging with architecture because you're talking about weight displacement in the same way that stone is used in cathedrals.

“A lot of your forms end up . . . if you're building them to be structurally sound, they echo these religious buildings that are shaped like that because of physics.

“So things that we associate with spirituality have come about through practical reasons and have sort of been associated with them, because architects have had to work within these constraints.

“And iron's got the same principles. So it's been really interesting thinking about architecture and iron's place within aesthetic and architectural movements and how that’s guiding what I've been making, and it'll guide my final form as well.

“So it might end up looking a little bit churchy, which is interesting because it's never been an interest of mine before, but it's just the way the material sort of expresses itself.”

This will be the largest sculpture John has attempted, in terms of weight. He has made bigger installations but with lighter materials. 

He says it’s interesting to compare his and Motoko’s work and methodology.

“She's coming up against problems that I'm not, and I'm coming up against ones that she's not, so it's nice.”

In his weekends, John heads back home to Karitane, where he is working on a wooden sculpture and a series of prints, which will be part of an exhibition at Wellington’s Robert Hill Gallery starting on April 3.

The works John and Motoko make will be exhibited at the end of their residency, probably around King's Birthday Weekend.