Paige Glazebrook Sculpture

Sculpture in the City: Welding class turns student's design into public art

Paige Glazebrook hasn't had much reason to visit the welding lab at Belleville West High School -- until now.

The art student is watching a welding class turn her abstract design into a 6-foot-tall steel sculpture.

It will be displayed at Art on the Square on May 14-15 then installed on the Belleville West grounds.

"I'm just so excited," said Glazebrook, 17, of Belleville. "If I have kids and I still live in the area, I'll be able to bring them here and say, 'I made that when I was young.'"

On Wednesday, Glazebrook won an Art on the Square contest that's an extension of a program called Sculpture in the City.

On Thursday, sparks flew as welding students pieced together pre-cut steel shapes. They were extra careful on this project.

"I didn't want to make a bad weld or anything," said Cameron Jordan, 17, of Belleville. "(The sculpture is) going to be outside the school and other people are going to see it."

Glazebrook's design loosely resembles a coffee cup on a cone-shaped base. The piece will weigh an estimated 600 pounds when completed.

The steel will be painted. Glazebrook is leaning toward green.

Sculpture teacher Dan Krause and welding teacher Mike Moore see the project as a rare opportunity to combine vocational education with the arts.

"Welding is about fusing metals, whether its a part for a truck or a deer stand," said Moore, 53, of Collinsville. "But you're always trying to challenge students to do something different, to think outside the box."

The contest was judged by Kevin Trobaugh, 53, of O'Fallon, a metal artist and teacher in the sheet-metal industry.

About 50 students in Krause's sculpture classes made "maquettes" (scale models) out of construction paper.

They had to use pre-determined shapes so the final product could be built with leftover parts and scrap steel from Trobaugh's employer.

"I didn't want anything over 8 feet, just because of the difficulty of handling it," he said. "(The sculpture has) to be safe. And it's public art, so you've got to think about how the public is going to interact with it."

Steel used for Glazebrook's piece includes extra steps from a spiral staircase installed in a condo owned by former St. Louis Rams player Marshall Faulk.

The High School Sculpture in the City program is being funded by the Belleville law firm Mathis, Marifian & Richter.

"We thought it was a way to allow students to work with a professional artist, someone who is actually out there producing art and selling it in the community," said attorney Pat Mathis, 59, of Belleville. "It's a different perspective than you get in a classroom."

The law firm has co-sponsored Art on the Square since its inception in 2002. Attorneys donated a large sculpture in front of the Bank of America building, and their third-floor office doubles as an art gallery.

The firm is funding the sculpture program for three years. This will give Belleville East High School and Althoff Catholic High School students a chance to participate.

Glazebrook will graduate from Belleville West in May. She plans to study art education at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston and become a teacher.

"She has a lot of ability as an artist," said Krause, 35, of Swansea. "But more important than that, she's very creative, and she wants to learn."