Summer inspiration: Bronze-casting class

Drawing and design, digital photography and videography, printmaking, ceramics, and sculpture are among the courses that keep Skidmore art students learning and creating on even the doggiest days of summer.

Part of the College's summer term that offers courses in a wide range of disciplines, the courses are popular with regular credit-seeking students as well as with pre-college youngsters and the occasional adult employee or city resident.

The intensive art seminars - two to three hours at a time, five days a week - pack a semester of study into about five weeks. That meant this summer's bronze-casting students had their feet to the fire, literally - they cast their sculptures in wax, encased them in molds and melted out the wax, and then poured in glowing, molten metal to create their final pieces.