Ohio Wesleyan Graduate, Art Foundry Business Owner to Speak Oct. 29 on Campus
Jeb Stuart Wood, an Ohio Wesleyan fine arts major, now runs one of the premier art foundries. He will speak Oct. 29 at the university. (Photo courtesy of Independent Casting)
DELAWARE, Ohio – When writer Beth Kephart walks into Jeb Stuart Wood’s art foundry business, she describes stepping into “a fantastical world of green filtered light and barrel drums, ceramic cavities and kilns. … Wax slops around in a pot. An orange cylinder blows heat into the chill. There is an exhumation of dust.
“Now Jeb himself appears from a room in the faraway back,” Kephart continues in a Philadelphia Inquirer article. “He has degrees in fine arts and biochemistry, a flannel shirt, a thick plume of hair beneath a modest cap, and he’s a foundry man, an artist. Some of the most important artists of our time entrust Jeb and his colleagues with their casts.”
A 2000 Ohio Wesleyan University graduate, Wood is the director of Independent Casting Inc., one of the nation’s premier art foundries. Wood will return to campus Oct. 29 to discuss “The Devil is in the Details,” a look at the intersection of art and business. He also will participate with OWU students and fine arts faculty member Jonathan Quick in an iron pour. Wood will speak at 4:10 p.m. in the Bayley Room on the second floor of Beeghly Library, 43 Rowland Ave., Delaware. His presentation is free and open to the public.
At Ohio Wesleyan, Wood majored in fine arts with a concentration in sculpture and metals. After graduation, he worked as a sculptor for the acclaimed art foundry Johnson Atelier in Mercerville, New Jersey, before opening Independent Casting in Philadelphia.
Wood’s business was created with a goal of providing “artists a foundry that elevates the craft itself to a fine art.” Its services include lost wax casting, sand casting, fabrication, patination, restoration, mold-making, and 3D rendering. Clients include contemporary artists Kiki Smith, Tom Otterness, Michelle Oka Donor, and Hans Haacke. Earlier this year, the foundry cast Haacke’s sculpture “Gift Horse” for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London.
Learn more about Wood and Independent Casting at www.independentfoundry.com. Learn more about Ohio Wesleyan’s Department of Fine Arts at https://www.owu.edu/academics/departments-programs/department-of-fine-arts/.
Founded in 1842, Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts universities. Located in Delaware, Ohio, the private university offers 87 undergraduate majors and competes in 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. Ohio Wesleyan combines a challenging, internationally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities to connect classroom theory with real-world experience. OWU’s 1,675 students represent 43 U.S. states and territories and 33 countries. Ohio Wesleyan is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” listed on the latest President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction, and included in the U.S. News & World Report and Princeton Review “best colleges” lists. Learn more at www.owu.edu.