As the owner of Hammer In Hand Custom Cycles in St. Johns, Iler builds motorcycles for a living, but on Friday and Saturday he showcased how he puts the same skills to use in his free time. For the second consecutive year, Iler was Scrapfest’s first place winner. He was also the People’s Choice Award winner for his display “The Fiddler,” which was a metal windmill which harnessed wind energy to move a small fiddle player beneath it.
Iler, along with 17 other teams of artists, had just two weeks to fashion a sculpture out of up to 500 pounds of scrap metal.
“We get applications in April ... and then this year it was May 31 ... we (went) to Friedland Industries, the junkyard in Old Town, and teams have one hour to collect up to 500 pounds of scrap metal,” Scrapfest director Bridget Gonyeau said. “After that, they have two weeks to build, and they can only use materials from that scrapyard.”
Iler said he and his team — Ian Markiw, Michele Iler and Megan Markiw — will likely participate in Scrapfest in the years to come.
“Kinetic stuff is always fun to make, and you don’t get much of an opportunity to make it, so Scrapfest is like a reset button,” he said. “I actually got hooked on it — now if you go to our shop there (are) junk metal sculptures all over the place.”
But he said the importance of Scrapfest to Lansing goes far beyond the fun and the individual gain from the live and online auction of the pieces. Iler said he and his team didn’t have a specific goal for how much their winning sculpture would sell for in the auction.
“It really doesn’t matter what it goes for — I hope it goes for a lot just because it would really help all of this out for next year,” Iler said. “The whole idea of doing all this is all just to raise money for Old Town and raise awareness in the community.”
David Such, co-chair of the Scrapfest planning committee and the proposer of the entire festival idea to Friedland Industries six years ago, agreed Scrapfest is important both in promoting art and being “green,” considering the amount of scrap metal repurposed by the artists.
Scrapfest showcased the artists’ sculptures during the Festival of the Moon and Sun to allow more spectators to enjoy the artwork.
“The reason we attached it to the Festival of the Sun and Moon was because we thought people going to the festival would also be interested in looking at art. This has kind of taken on a life of its own,” Such said. “It’s so varied, abstract ... It reaches all level(s) of people.”
