The Sculpture program at UNC has come a long way since it began in the early days of the university, and its future is especially bright with the establishment of the Maxine and Don Schwartz Foundry and Sculpture Program Fund, a generous gift from the Schwartz’s children in memoriam of the couple.

Sculpture at UNC started out in the School of Industrial Technology and Home Economics, offering training for future educators, economists and industry workers in ceramics and functional arts. Until the mid-1960s, Sculpture was a class in Industrial Arts and was housed with Printmaking and Photography in Kepner Hall, now home to the Monfort College of Business. By the early ‘90s, Sculpture became an area of focus in the School of Art and Design and was housed in the basement of the original Arts Annex. 

Professor Emeritus Thomas Stephens, head of Sculpture at that time, describes the space, which was formerly the university’s heating plant, as small but functional, with a wood shop on one end, a foundry/welding area on the other and a classroom in between. The Arts Annex expansion project began later that same decade and was completed in 2001. Stephens and others advised on the construction and equipment.

Stephens explains that while leading the Sculpture program, he wanted to improve its bronze/metal casting component by adding ceramic shell casting. He says, “Up to that point, only traditional, bulky investment casting had been done on a very limited basis.” He was teaching “cold casting” with resin and other materials, but little “hot metal.”

As Stephens sought to improve the Sculpture facilities, Karen Richardson of Sculpture Depot in Loveland eventually referred him to Don Schwartz and his wife Maxine, an established artist. They had a fabrication business and a small foundry north of Greeley, where they had set up a ceramic shell lab to cast Maxine’s sculptures as well as the work of other artists. Don helped Stephens set up the new Sculpture Lab in the Arts Annex by fabricating the equipment needed, such as drying racks, slurry tanks and mixers, silica bins and the original burnout kiln, and recommending suppliers for ceramic shell materials. 

Stephens says of Don and Maxine, “If I had any questions, they were always available and happy to help.”

Now, after several years in the lab that the Schwartzes helped build, the foundry commemorates and honors the couple’s many contributions with its new name, the Maxine and Don Schwartz Foundry. And their Sculpture Program Fund will significantly impact the progress of the already expanding program.

Bri Murphy, the current head of Sculpture and Digital Fabrication, has reinvigorated Sculpture in just a few years after a brief hiatus due to institutional changes and COVID. They oversaw the relighting of the foundry’s furnace last year, which brought hot metal casting back for students. Murphy has brought the program’s curriculum back to life and would like to see it strike a balance of innovation and tradition, embracing new technologies in digital fabrication in tandem with analog skills such as woodworking and bronze casting.

Thanks to the new fund, Murphy is hoping to add sand casting equipment to the established ceramic shell process. This will give students more ways to experience the foundry, making it possible for

beginning students to experience it in one or two days while maintaining the processes for advanced students that take several weeks. Additionally, the gift will help subsidize the often cost-prohibitive Casting and Mold Making course, making it more accessible to a variety of students.

In addition to expanding curricular offerings, the fund will help support a visiting artist program in collaboration with UNC Galleries. The goal is to feature metal casting artists in exhibitions, incorporate visiting artist workshops into classes and make meaningful connections with the northern Colorado casting community. This has already started happening with an advanced casting class trip to Loveland studios, a guest patina workshop from Richardson and the booking of a visiting sculpture artist in UNC Galleries.

The Maxine and Don Schwartz Foundry and Sculpture Program Fund has increased momentum for Sculpture at UNC, and the couple’s family is inviting the larger community to join them in inspiring future sculptors by giving to the new fund. They are offering a dollar-for-dollar match (up to $50,000) for every donation.