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Myself and Ashleigh Harrold

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At the International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art held in Scranton, PA USA, we applied to create a performance to highlight the shared history between Scranton and Wales.

For this performance, we will used the two symbols of our Welsh-Scranton history, the Welsh Red Dragon and the Electric City Light Bulb to celebrate the 53,768 welsh miners that emigrated to Scranton in the early 1800’s. We poured iron into the head of the Welsh Red Dragon to cascade out of the mouth and eyes into a mould of the Scranton Light Bulb, illustrating how the welsh helped form the industry of iron and steel in Scranton. The mould was cracked open revealing a glowing bulb, much like the one seen on the Scranton Electric Building.

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Myself and Ashleigh Harrold are both incredibly grateful for all the help we received; the St. David’s Society and North America Welsh Foundation for their generous donations, the chairs of the ICCCIA for their resourcefulness and always having time for us. We could not have done it without the Alfred crew and everyone else that helped with all the hard gruelling work while we were running around finishing things off. If it wasn’t for everyone that helped, it wouldn’t have happened. We have returned back to Wales having made great links within the Welsh community internationally and met some amazing iron artists, seen some fantastic talks and learnt an enormous amount.