From steel, artist Casey Westbook will forge Robocop

Picture this, if you can: a ten-foot high steel apparatus, loaded with industrial coke, shooting fire and embers like a volcano while rivers of molten steel, hot enough to melt an automobile, flow out and harden. Imagine shaping those two tons of scrap iron into a work of art.

That's the skill sculptor and furnace-builder Casey Westbrook's honed; the one he'll use to turn the statue of Robocop from an internet meme to a real, tactile work for the public to see, with only a Kevlar suit for safety. And while it isn't his largest display yet (that would be the 25-ton spectacular he produced for artist and exhibition-creator Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle), this behind-the-scenes peek at the artistry behind Robocop might convince some Detroiters that there's more to this statue than Hollywood dazzle and science fiction imagination.

Excerpt:

Once two tons of molten scrap iron has collected in massive cylinders at the bottom of the furnace, the artist will unplug them like a vintner hammering the bung out of a cask, and the metal will gush directly into the mold. It's likely Robocop will be cast upside-down, his outstretched arms reaching for the ground as if to brace his mass against a fall. A day or two later, once he's cooled, they'll knock off the mold with hammers and chisels and the world's greatest cop will thunder to earth like Han after he was frozen in Carbonite.

Find out more here.