Turning Lava Into Art
By Flash Steinbeiser
Down at Syracuse University’s Communications Art building, Bob Wysocki twists and turns a black piece of rock in his hands like a Rubik’s cube. He gingerly touches its every bump and groove. In a torn hooded sweatshirt and Carhartt slacks, he speaks in mumbled tones, his lips barely moving. While he’s usually quiet and reserved, he begins making hurried and excited claims. The jagged piece of Earth holds all sorts of hidden possibilities for Wysocki, but none of them are scientific. Wysocki isn’t a geologist—far from it. He’s a sculpture professor. An artist.
Around the time this is happening, Jeffery Karson gazes at dozens of nearly identical rocks in his Heroy Geology Lab office. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, he too studies the rocks, poking and prodding their surface area while giving detailed explanations about their molecular structure. Through his cold, hard jargon, it’s clear that he’s a scientist. It’s funny then, with a diamond stud in his ear, that he still appreciates these rocks as pieces of art.
That’s because these rocks are actually pieces of hardened lava created by Wysocki and Karson. It’s not every day that two men, plucked from opposite ends of the scholastic spectrum, would find a common interest. Although their reasons for creating and studying lava are different, ask either one and they’d say they’re pioneering production would be impossible without either person. “I’m fascinated with Bob’s very different interests from mine, and just how they fit together,” Karson said.
The mash-up of art and science began in October 2009 when Wysocki, a middle-aged man with a perpetual five o’clock shadow, watched melted iron pour out of a heating furnace. A black substance oozing from the furnace’s cracks caught Wysocki’s eye. The substance was just extra iron deposit, nothing special. But for Wysocki, it was the next step in his artistic career. “It looked like pure, black lava. It was just really beautiful,” he recalled. Wysocki identifies himself as a geologic sculptor, which means he creates constantly changing landforms like a mud flow, sand dunes, or in this case, lava flow. But before he pursued his latest sculpture, he established one rule: the lava had to be completely natural, just as if it erupted from a volcano. This meant no added metals or substances, which could help give the lava shape and structure.
On a snowy February morning, Wysocki and Karson pour their biggest batch of lava yet—in the middle of a blizzard. “It’s a perfect day for a lava melt!” Karson jokes to the crowd that’s come to witness the spectacle. While others have created pure lava, it’s never been more than a shot glass’ worth. It’s a far cry from the 800-pound vat of melted basalt brewing outside the ComArt building in a furnace built by one of his students. Wysocki doesn’t have time for comedic relief, lumbering around the lava vat with his welding helmet and apron. Like a brewmaster, he’s looking for the perfect pour. Wysocki is the first in the country to create lava at such a magnitude.
Naturally, this is a momentous occasion for Karson, who eagerly explains the scientific process to all inquisitive viewers, laughing and smiling as he lectures on the speed at which lava travels on ice. Karson, who has studied volcanic rock both in Iceland and on the ocean floor, never thought he’d be able conduct the same experiments one mile from his office. As Karson recalls, Bob just appeared in his office one day, explained his project, and offered the Earth Sciences Chair a place in it. “For them to actually be working with real lava…of course the science people are beside themselves, because they haven’t had access to anything like this,” Wysocki said.
As Wysocki begins pouring the lava, it’s like the sun itself streams from the vat. Its heat can be felt from yards away, and the bright orange glow instantly becomes the focal point of everybody’s gaze. And for the first time since Karson arrived for the pour, his mouth is no longer curled in a grin. It just hangs there, slightly ajar. If anyone is showing any expression, it’s Wysocki—face glistening with sweat as he bustles around the tank, ensuring that the lava pours out smoothly.
When he’s not spellbound by it, Karson gushes about the lava flow discoveries he’s already made, such as how molten lava bubbles up and that lava lumps into different-sized landforms depending on the slope it flows on. He says these are discoveries the geology community always suspected, but could never confirm in a natural environment. In exchange for the all-access pass to free-flowing lava, Karson helps Wysocki improve his sculpture work. His geology sculptures may classify as art, but an element of science is still needed to perfect it. Wysocki said his first 12 lava pours yielded landforms he couldn’t sculpt with. That’s where Karson comes in. After he studies lava samples for his own research, he tells Wysocki what went wrong in the latest pour. “It’s interesting to think that he wants to make a lava flow that has this certain shape or an artistic rendering,” Karson said. “He could figure it out ultimately just by trial and error probably, but I think we can save him a lot of time and really control his working material, his ‘palate.’” After the lava is finally poured, Wysocki explains that he’s slightly disappointed with the day’s results. He recites his process’ issues with the precision of a scientist, taking note of every unaccounted variable. The largest hurdle for Wysocki and Karson has been melting the basalt at just the right temperature, allowing for a smooth flow rate and consistent texture not only suitable for land structures, but for regular sculpting as well.
As excited as they are about Wysocki’s landscape sculpture, his assistants and sculpture majors Noah Hausknecht and Phillip Evans see another artistic purpose for lava. Hausknecht and Evans want to apply the sculpting methods used for iron, bronze, and aluminum for molding molten rock. “As an art form, lava can be a bunch of different things,” Hausknecht said. “As a molded object, it would just look really cool.” As of now, they’ve had difficulty getting the lava to cool with a malleable texture. It’s still too brittle for molding or manipulation. However, Karson remains confident that lava will one day be the source for future sculpting. “If you wanted to make something more specific in shape or dimension, some of those exist in nature to some extent,” Karson said. “And we can help guide the experiments that way.”
The future of Karson and Wysocki’s research is still open-ended. Geologists from the University of Buffalo and SUNY Binghamton are beginning a pilgrimage to The Warehouse to conduct their own lava research. With each experiment, they’re increasing the amount of lava that pours out of the furnace. Though understandably, Wysocki doesn’t want to pour lava in Syracuse forever. Once he perfects the lava flow, he wants to mobilize it, taking the furnace around the country, melting massive volcanic structures, and leaving them there, a natural anomaly stuck in a foreign environment. “This material will still be there, even after we’re dead and gone,” Evans said, his eyes glued to the black rock. Imagine volcanic landforms resting on the prairies of Nebraska or stuck between trees in the forests of Maine. It’s the only image that’s made Wysocki smile all day. His head steaming from the lava’s heat, his voice picks up like Karson’s, accelerating as he explains each step of his project. There’s a fresh hole in his pants where lava recently burnt through. He nonchalantly dismisses it, quickly returning to discussion of his art.
Wysocki and Karson will continue discovering the mysteries of their black rocks within their separate practices. But as Wysocki breaks down the scientific components of basalt and Karson compares the beauty of volcanic rock to glass, it’s clear the two worlds aren’t as separate as they’d like to believe. In fact, the project bridges interests beyond just art and science. Students weren’t the only ones who viewed the lava pour.
Joining them were SU faculty from different departments, local residents, and their children, with marshmallows and sticks in hand. They all share a common interest: taking part in an interdisciplinary experience that isn’t happening anywhere else in the world. “It speaks to a kind of intellectual freedom and creativities that we can participate in here,” Karson said. “It can bring us a different mode of learning.”