![]() ![]() Most of these people live here in the county. By building a facility where artists can come in and rent a space by the hour, they don’t have to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars of capital to build their own facility. “In the case of fire artists, energy costs are one of, if not the largest expenses. “Artists can’t make a living if they don’t have a place to work,” he said. So, they began modifying them, and changed the size of burn orifices and the type of air supply to work with the limits of the landfill.Įventually, they got it right, and Muth moved onto the main idea for the park – to rent out the space and give artists a space to do their work. They bought forges designed to run on propane rather than natural gas, which didn’t run as well on the natural gas. Muth said they got around the problem by modifying their equipment: “When we had equipment and didn’t like the way it was working, we built all new equipment.” It was a lot of trial and error, according to him – tinkering around and paying attention to what worked and what didn’t. “We reach 2,000 to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit here every day.” “That was obviously incorrect,” Muth said. Part of what they thought would never work was the fact that the gas from the landfill was only 68% methane, which they perceived as overly difficult to reach the temperature needed to do glass and metal work. They ran calculations and thought it wouldn’t work. “They weren’t ADD enough to try it for themselves. “ couldn’t think outside the box,” he said. Muth credits the park’s success to the ability to think outside the box. And when work started on the project, the land was going to waste, full of unused scraps of police cars and other detritus. Many other engineers said the idea of channeling gas into power to do art wouldn’t work. Project Director Timm Muth, an engineer, has helmed the project since its 2005 inception, and Muth said the idea was one that many were skeptical of before he got it rolling. The park is owned by Jackson County, and is part of the public works department in that county. The studios are nestled inside a large warehouse adorned with colorful graffiti murals – it looks like the kind of place you’d naturally find artists. Larry Dillsboro’s Green Energy Park, gas from the nearby landfill is put to good use as it helps power the work of glassblowers and blacksmiths.
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