Award winning books and sculpture

Been busy running to Denver and Loveland getting molds made, wax castings poured and bronzes made. The two Ascensions are still having their patina's tweaked before being put onto the bases and I'm working on some new pieces. But I wanted to share a non-sculpting event too - one of my favorite authors, Nancy Lee Mervar, called to let me know our book "Nana's Silly Goats" won first place in the Children's division for the Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVY awards for 2012! Loved illustrating her two books - Congrats, Nancy!

Will have new sculpting posts soon.

Making a silcone mold and wax pour

Another lesson learned: two right angles are difficult and time-consuming to produce in bronze.

My bronze sculpture, "Ascension"  is the woman that is rising from the base, supported by the cloth that is draping off of her hips. While I love the waterfall effect of the drapery, in reality, it causes a lot of headaches for the wax chasers, metal chasers and base makers. It also makes production more difficult, time-consuming and costly.

Additionally, the foundry mold-maker misunderstood my instructions and added wax to the back of the fabric in the mold-making process that required hours for me to remove and chase.

So, since I learned that the the two right angles are a problem and the current cloth in wax required so much time (every single time one is made!) I decided it would be best to sculpt a new section to the drapery to replace the one that they were currently using. I took the existing wax, removed the mistake in the back and designed new draping to the bottom that just clears the base. This will limit the sculpt to only one right angle (thus making production much smoother) and will also reduce the chasing done by more than 3/4 of the current time spent on this one part of the sculpture.

Once I perfected the wax fabric, I made a pour mold and then did a sample wax pouring. I was pleased that it worked well on the first try, enabling me to get the new chased wax and the new mold to the foundry so the next two in the edition can begin their process into becoming bronze #2 & #3 of 33.

Ascension Traditional Bronze Patina

This is the traditional bronze patina on the same sculpture, Ascension. Interesting how the patina can change the look of a sculpture. They are both beautiful in different ways.

In other happy news, I'm happy to say that I was again selected to show my work at the Loveland Sculpture Invitational 2012 - so time to get back in the studio, finish those two waxes and get back to sculpting!

Bronze Ascension with stone-like patina

 

Ascension is finally finished. This bronze is number 1/33 and has a neutral stone-like patina. You can see that the fabric draping from her hips begins to darken until it becomes the same value as the base granite. This is what I had envisioned: a light to dark composition emphasizing the rising of the woman. I had planned on having the drapery more earthy greens and blues, but that was before I started the bronze process and before I had learned about the limits of good patina. Rather than risk having the patina change too much over time or be garish in color, I opted for a more muted palette, which is in keeping with the very quiet nature of the piece. The base is a lovely granite called Nordic Green. Truly it is more of a soft black with hints of greens and coppery browns when the light strikes it on an angle. I also paid extra to have a revolving base, which makes it easy to turn and view all sides of her.

This first bronze has already been sold to Marie...I have an Artist's Proof for myself with a traditional patina, which I will have photos of tomorrow. Two more waxes of Ascension are nearly complete and will be taken to the foundry soon to begin their journey into bronze.

Refining the clay sketch maquette "State of Grace"

 I spent a little time refining the forms and attitude for this clay sketch. It is next in the series that I'm doing of rising women. The first, "Ascension" is nearly finished in bronze and releasing very soon. This sketch in clay is a study for the next to go to bronze. The simple armature is 12" - about the same size as "Ascension". The final for this sculpt will be 18" using the smallest of the TruForm armatures.

Overall, I'm pleased with the direction that this is taking, but will change the hair and cloth a bit on the final. I'll be taking this sketch down to Art Castings to have them look her over for any casting problems before I start the final. I'll also take the sketch into the Base shop to get some ideas before I go to sculpt that may change the fabric and the overall height. Once I've had a chance to discuss this piece with my bronze team, I can begin working on the final clay to size.

This piece will be titled "State of Grace". 12" armature - but with hair and cloth she is currently 18" tall.

Metal Chasing of "Ascension"

The bronze has been poured then the metal shell smashed off. After it was sandblasted to clean off any lingering particles, they take the sculpture in and begin to weld the pieces back together. Then an artisan known as a metal chaser then works on
burnishing out the weld seams and any some imperfections that they find. Marker indicates areas that they will do some additional work.

 I spent a lot of time at the Base Shop selecting the base (Nordic Green Granite) and how the sculpture will work with the base. We are going to go with a two tier base so that there will be room for the turntable (then the sculpture will rotate smoothly)

The sculpture is looking beautiful and I've mapped out my patina ideas - so once the sculpture has been custom fit to the base and the chasing done - it will be time to patina and affix to the base!

First Bronze Pouring of "Ascension"

Today was the first pouring of bronze for "Ascension"!  The shells had been built up over the hollow wax sections over a period of time. The shells were then placed into the furnace and the wax was melted out - a process referred to as "lost wax".

Next they took special buckets and collected the molten bronze and poured the liquid metal into the now-hollow ceramic shells. Once the bronze cools, they break apart the ceramic shells using hammer and pneumatic tools. After removing the hard shells, the sprues are then cut off using plasma torches.

Once that is completed, the sections of bronze are cleaned up by sand-blasting the last bits of plaster shell residue.

Finally, after the pieces are cleaned up they are ready to be welded back together.

Tomorrow I'll post photos of the sculpt being metal-chased.

Attaching wax sprues & making ceramic shell

Jeanne from Art Castings foundry let me know that the sprues were being added to my wax Ascension today. So I grabbed my camera and drove down through the snow to get some shots of the process. Wendy was working on the piece as I walked into the sprue room. She showed me how she evaluates each section to envision how the bronze will flow into the cavity left by the wax, then creates different sized channels out of wax (sprues) to act as the funnel for the bronze to pour down.

It's amazing how much work and time goes into the creation of each and every bronze. This whole process is created for every one in an edition and also means that no two bronzes are 100% identical.

Once all the wax spruces are in place, Wendy adds a pipe to the bottom of the pour cup and takes to the slurry room and places them on tall poles called 'trees'.

Next John will take each wax section and dip it into a slurry mixture, let it drain a bit then take it to a sand box and shake silica over it. The slurry and silica are built up layer, by layer over a period of 1-2 weeks, creating a hard shell encasing the wax. They are placed on the trees to dry and harden.

Once the shell is complete, it's off to the furnace to burn out all the wax and pour the molten bronze.

Wax Chasing & Lessons learned

I worked on the first two wax castings of "Ascension". The folks at Art Castings were very helpful and Mac did some good work on the chasing. However, he was working blind, as he got her in pieces and had no real idea how she went together. Can't imagine doing that! So I learned that it's a good idea to provide a series of photos for them to work from.

Another issue was that there was some confusion over how the bronze was to be mounted onto the base. Since they didn't have a photo, they thought it was one way and realized that there wouldn't be enough metal to support the floating woman.  In reality, there was, mounted the way I had planned. So I had to go back and carve out all the wax that they had added.

Never worked with wax before so after a few hours at the foundry, I decided to pack her up and take back to my studio, since it was taking longer than I thought. You can see my desk with the various tools. The hot tool that is plugged in on my desk proved much too hot to use on the sculpt much. It vaporized the wax and melted much too aggressively to be much use to me. So I kept it on and placed my metal tools on the hot tool to heat the metal carving tools. That worked much better, overall.

It still took many hours, but that is mainly due to my inexperience and I'm sure it will go much faster next time. I may even chase the entire wax next time to gain even more understanding of the practice and to familiarize myself with what casts easily or harder to incorporate into my next sculpt. After finishing her up I took her back to Art Castings. Luckily for me, Jeanne too a look at the photoshopped image I had made explaining the mounting process - she didn't think it would work - that the stone would chip!

So I buzzed over to the Base Shop and spoke with Brian. Thanks to Brian and Jeanne, we were able to come up with a solution that will enable me to mount the sculpture as I had planned, with a bit of extra effort, and another lesson learned!

Wax pour for "Ascension" Bronze casting

It was quite foggy this morning and I nearly postponed my drive down to Art Castings in Loveland. But, since I'd already filled my travel mug with hot tea and charged up my camera, I decided not to wait and I'm quite glad!

When Jeanne greeted me, she knew just where my work, "Ascension", was in the maze of other sculptor's molds and waxes. They had just poured the first two waxes and Mac was starting to chase them.

In the montage photo:

1) collection of rubber molds inside the mother-mold

2) the mother mold encasing the rubber like a clamshell

3) you can see that the rubber comes out of the shell

4) the mother mold seams together tightly

5) hole where the wax is poured in

Here are some photos of the hollow wax that was poured. Mac is working on taking out imperfections in the wax. He will also fix where the armture came through. When he reaches a certain point in the process, they will call me and I will head down to spend the day doing finish chasing and detailing until I am satisfied before preparing the wax for the bronzing process.




You can see the whole process of making a bronze at the Art Castings site http://artcastings.com/casting-process.htmlhttp://artcastings.com/casting-process.html