May 27, 2010

FEATURE | Steel

MARY BAXTER

Matt Zubick of John Zubick Ltd. Scrap Metals

Scrap iron becomes sculpture in Fanshawe College art program

MARY BAXTER

correspondent

When it comes to scrap metal yards Matthew Zubick knows beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

“They’re not nice to look at; they’re noisy and dusty,” says Zubick, one of the managers of London-based John Zubick Ltd. Scrap Metals.

The family-owned yard, in operation since 1948, is working to change that perception with the help of Fanshawe College art students.

Each year since 2004, students in the college’s second-year sculpture class spend a day a week in a roped-off area of the yard making sculptures.

At the end of the year, their work is submitted to an independent jury and the yard awards the winning entry $1,000. Zubick keeps all the pieces and displays them at the yard’s entrance for two years. After that, they’re circulated throughout the yard.

“It gives us something neat to jazz up the place a bit,” says Zubick. “It shows a different side of who we are.”

The inspiration for the partnership came to Zubick in 2003 while looking at metal in the yard. “There’s so much there that looked appealing to me,” he says. “Some of it has been twisted by heat or by force.”

He sensed the artistic potential of the material and mentioned it to his wife, Erin.

Together they came up with the idea of contacting Fanshawe.

The program is now a part of the college’s regular curriculum.

Zubick says the sculptures are a crowd pleaser, noting people have stopped by to thank the company for putting them up.

For the art students, access to such a wide variety of materials is a bonus. “It opens up their world,” he says.

Paul Dreossi, the Fanshawe sculpture instructor who has been involved in the program since it began, says “if it wasn’t for this project, we wouldn’t be able to teach steel working to the students.”

At the college, he adds, sculptures are built to fit through doors. At Zubicks, “we move them with forklifts.”

Dreossi says working in the elements, such as cooler weather, can be a challenge for the students. “They’re used to a classroom facility.”

Health and safety committees from the yard and college collaborated to create a safe environment for the students to work. They roped off an area with a separate entrance and its own portable toilet to isolate them from dangers, such as heavy machinery moving throughout the 24-acre yard. Students are provided a safety talk, boots and helmets.

“If they’re leaving that site, to go and pick out material for example, they’re with one of our employees who drives them around and then they point to what they want and we will bring it back to them,” Zubick says.

A professional welder works with Dreossi to attach materials that students piece together.

The yard covers all costs, which average about $15,000 a year and Zubick says mill yards across Canada have expressed interested in what the yard is doing. He says introducing such a program elsewhere can be straightforward, though planning is critical, he says as is making sure the health and safety committee at the school is involved.

“There are a lot of risks but they can be eliminated,” he says.

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