3D printed iron gates: Celebrating an African American artist through a transdisciplinary lesson
Citation
Hunter-Doniger, Tracey; Radakovic, Nenad; O’Byrne, William Ian; Adams, Britnee; Gourdie, Emma; Heckman, Christian; Smith, Dillan. (2022) 3D printed iron gates: Celebrating an African American artist through a transdisciplinary lesson. Art Education, 75(4), 33–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2022.2053463
Abstract
Throughout Charleston, South Carolina, there is a distinctive style of iron gates and fences that frame the entryways of this historic city’s homes, schools, and restaurants. This is the artwork of Philip Simmons, an African American iron-gate artisan born and raised in Charleston (1912–2009). This article describes a transdisciplinary STEAM lesson designed for elementary-age children that centered on the art and legacy of Philip Simmons. The lesson integrated science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics to teach about Simmons’s work through 3D printing, symbolism, mathematics, and the history of Charleston. Through careful attention to culturally relevant pedagogy, the authors examine how transdisciplinary instruction can provide authentic, place-based entry points for learning while honoring the contributions of historically marginalized artists and communities.
Notes
This project started from a genuinely local problem: I was new to Charleston and teaching preservice educators, and I was surprised that not everyone I taught was familiar with Philip Simmons. They’d walked past his gates their whole lives. But they didn’t know who made them, or what it took.
What I appreciated about this collaboration was that the transdisciplinary frame wasn’t retrofitted onto the lesson — it emerged from the subject matter itself. Iron gates involve metallurgy, mathematics, design, history, and craft. Philip Simmons’s work involves the history of segregation in Charleston, the economics of the ironworking trade, and the specific aesthetics of a self-taught artist who became a master. You can’t teach that through a single disciplinary lens.
The 3D printing component was more than a technology hook. It gave students a feel for what it means to make something precise — to understand that the symmetry in Simmons’s gates wasn’t incidental but intentional, the result of decades of practice. That’s a different kind of respect than simply learning his name.