- So, I had an old teacher that told me, he said pouring aluminum is like taking a drink of milk.

Pouring bronze is like having a beer, and pouring iron is like having a shot of bourbon, and he is right.

- [Cameraman] So you like bourbon the best?

- I do.

(both laughing) - [Cameraman] Awesome.

- [Narrator] It takes a special kind of person to make this type of art.

- We're at Sculpture Trails.

My name is Gerry Masse.

I'm the founding director, and I guess this is my big crazy mess.

- [Narrator] This big crazy mess attracts Hoosiers across Indiana as well as 3D artists across the nation, all to the small town of Salisbury.

- [Gerry] We are pretty much in the middle of Indiana, about 50 miles south of Indianapolis, 15 minutes west of Bloomington.

- [Narrator] Inside these molds are one of a kind works of art that will eventually find their home along the sculpture trail, an outdoor museum nestled in the woods with over 180 cast iron sculptures along three miles of well-maintained hiking trails.

- [Gerry] The one thing about the trails is it'll always be here open and free.

So bring your families out when you have nothing to do.

It's a great place for a walk.

Enjoy nature, and it's a cool place to see some sculptures that has been made by artists that are still alive and kicking and wanna make more.

- [Narrator] While many come here just to walk the trail, tonight, Jerry and his team of artists are putting on a show.

- Tonight is our biggest event of the whole year.

When we cast iron, we will usually do it at nighttime 'cause it's really dangerous, and we really don't want the public around when we do it, just for liability.

But at the same time, we wanna show the public what's going on.

So this one night of the year we call fire at night is the one time we let the public come on out and celebrate with us the end of a month of creating cast iron with artists from around the world.

You could come out early and carve some scratch blocks and make a relief sculpture.

We have a bowl mold that you could carve into and create a cast iron bowl.

Of course there is a lot to see and just hang out and watch.

So a lot of folks love that.

And this will be probably our last pour, putting us over 30,000 pounds of metal for the whole month.

That's a lot of metal for a bunch of young artists to be casting out in the middle of nowhere.

It's fun to watch.

- [Narrator] So what goes into making one of these cast iron sculptures?

- So an artist will show up with a pattern, and they show up and say, hey, we want to cast this in iron.

So we will take sand molds and build a mold around it.

They will pull the pattern out, put the mold back together, and then we'll create a gating system where the metal can be poured and vented, and then boom, we turn it into metal.

Now once it's metal, they still have hundreds of hours to grind it, chase it, finish it, get it installed.

So, even though it's cast, it still a has a long way to go.

(uplifting music) - [Narrator] Everyone you see in orange shirts are actually interns.

All of these artists have been here for weeks preparing molds for today's event.

- So our in intern program, internship program, they get to come in, they get to build a piece, and if it gets into the exhibition, it can be on showing for two years.

They'll have the experience of around 60,000 pounds of sand mold making, multi-part meld making.

The big problem for young artists is money.

So that's our big goal, is to reduce their financial burden and give 'em a ton, actually 15 tons of experience.

- [Narrator] Apparently all this came to be because Gerry simply ran outta space.

- At the beginning of all this in 2002, I make sculptures, a lot of my buddies make sculptures, and I was literally putting them out on the property kind of to store 'em a little bit with the intention of maybe we'll create some kind of a museum, and it sure has blown this community up.

Everybody's really excited about sculpture trails, and we're excited for the next 20 years.

Whether we promote it or not, everybody's showing up.

Artists keep applying.

So it's become one of these things that's just growing and growing and growing without us involved at all.

It's just a beast, it just started.

We never even sat down and decided to do this.

It just exploded into something.

- [Narrator] Want to get involved?

Gerry says there are several ways Hoosiers can help.

- Best thing to do if you wanna get involved is go right into the website, sign up with the contact list, volunteer list, throw a dollar in the donation box, throw some sticks off the path, and make sure you follow his on Instagram so you know what's going on.

(uplifting music)