Steel Works
The steel works as an image of production has become an icon for the mechanical age; less obvious but evident is the human figure embedded within the works and its processes.  The steel works is mechanical technology embodied and the human body mechanized.  This body is assembled in different orientations relative to the ground, at once prone and vertical.  The organs of the steel works perform specific and isolated functions; their forms possess the geometric qualities of anatomical parts.  In the coal-gas fired hearth the gaseous fuel and exhaust alternate moving through brick chambers caged in steel frames; they resemble human lungs in both their form and literal uses.  The chambers, called checkers, are heated by exhaust and breathe in the coal-gas, raising its temperature before the gas in turn burns in the open hearth and liquifies the ore.  The steelworker is at the fire, in the laboratory, in the union hall and operating the overhead cranes.
 
Modern steel-making is a precisely measured and controlled activity.  Exact quantities of ore, scrap, coal, and gasses are prescribed and recorded for each heat of the furnace.  The sequential processes of steel-making, from mining to finishing and fabricating, are intertwined in a simple rhythm of digging, melting, pouring, cooling, heating, stretching, rolling, fabricating, and recycling.  Arnold Palmer worked in a steel works.