At the Colorado Springs School, a special event takes place every three years.

Over in the yard of the campus’s Carriage House, a bright glow illuminates the night. There, molten hot iron pours out of a cupola, reaching temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees. Students, dressed head to toe in protective gear, work in teams to monitor the flow of the melted iron into casts they designed, practicing the ancient art of iron pouring.

The Colorado Springs School has taught iron pouring for 30 years. Typically, this skill is only taught at the collegiate level — making it the only high school in the U.S. to offer such a course.

“This is very different, because besides the teachers, it’s just the high schoolers having to do it, ninth through 12th grade, doing it by themselves. And that means repairing the equipment, learning how to use it, building new equipment when we need it and going through the whole process of importing our own stuff,” said the school’s art director, Hans Wolfe, who also teaches iron pouring. “That’s what makes it really experiential, because it’s the whole process.”

The three-week seminar for high school students is a blend of art and trade. For the iron pour course, students create a design and execute the iron pour using molten metal to create art.

This year, students completed their iron pour in mid-March. Now, their sculptures are in the final phases in which the works will undergo polishing. Once complete, the students’ artwork will be displayed in an exhibition at the school.

“The seminar itself is developed around the academic study of the history and discovery of metals,” Wolfe said. “So that’s a whole breadth of the history and usages of metal, with the hands-on experience tied into it through their making.”

The school introduced the iron pouring program in 1994, when Wolfe met a former science teacher at the school while teaching iron pouring at the Art Institute of Chicago.

“He just was astounded by what he saw, the stuff we were building and all the equipment we had, and the people in their gear and stuff,” Wolfe said. “So he approached me and he asked me, ‘Do you think you could do this with high school students?’ And I said, ‘With the right high school students.’ He said, ‘You got to come to my school.’”

The art form relies on a basic understanding of chemistry, with 200 pounds of purified coal used to fuel the fire that melts the iron. The school uses scrap iron from its 110-year-old boiler that was previously housed in the campus’s historic Trianon building. About 1,200 pounds of iron is broken down for the pour.

“Once you light that furnace, you’re committed,” Wolfe said. “This is the same way they did it in industry back when they lit coke-fired furnaces. They would get all the molds ready and everything in the whole foundry, and then they would start the big furnace and pour everything until they were done. That’s what we do. That’s the moment where they all come together.”

Students create their sculptures by using a lost wax process, which dates back to 2000 B.C. From there, the mold is used for their iron sculptures. Everything in the class, including the equipment, is built from scratch by the students.

“They work their way up through the lost wax process, and then they start to understand melting metals like iron and we talk about the technology behind that, and how the equipment works,” Wolfe said.

While students have free rein over the design of their sculpture, they are required to select an artist who inspires their artwork and present research on their selected artist.

One of the most integral aspects to the iron pour is the need for teamwork. That, Wolfe said, makes the iron pour unique among other mediums.

“This is about people who know iron casting coming together and working collaboratively to pull it off, and that’s the point we make to the students is it’s a team effort,” Wolfe said.

“You’re never going to do it alone, and you have to count on the team and be a part of that. And that’s what we love as artists, when we get to work with other professionals. It’s such a joy to be around people who are all focused together and trying for a common goal.”