I have had some interesting inquires lately. First I was contacted by
the set designers for the TV show "Scandal" asking if they could rent my
bronze sculpture "Fierce" (Harriet Tubman) for one of their set of
"Scandal". Very interesting but after they reviewed the various options
for their set design they ended up not going in that direction. Shame,
it would have been very cool to see my bronze sculpture of Harriet
Tubman on TV.
Then I was contacted by 21 Century Fox's FX TV
Studio. They were interested in purchasing a casting of my original
ceramic sculpture bust of Frederick Douglass "The Orator". I had a
client already committed to purchasing a casting and I agreed to do an
edition of 10 cast in Forton with this client reserving #1/10. The
studio agreed to buy #2/10 of "The Orator" for the set of their upcoming
10-episode "The Assassination of Gianni Versace" for their show
American Crime Story. They began filming the series on location at the
Versace mansion in Miami in April and have pushed the release date up to
Season 2 instead of Season 3.
It ended up being a rush to get
the mold made and cast the bust in Forton, duplicate the patina and
overnight air-ship the sculpture to Miami but it was very interesting to
work with Fox/FX to get this done in time for filming. Below are
photos showing the process of making the casting. I was very pleased
with how the casting came out. It's always nerve-wracking to work on a
tight deadline - but this was exceedingly tight with a movie set
counting on the work being there on time. The mold and casting came out
great and once the patina added it was identical to the original. In the
photos below I show the process and the final outcome. There wasn't
time to set up my photography equipment so I just snapped some shots
with my phone in the studio. The patina was damaged on the original
sculpture during the mold-making but is something that I can repair
later. The Frederick Douglass casting is available to purchase $1500.
Call me at (970)310-8233 or email me at Lori@KiplingerPandy.com for more information.
"Sunday Comics" 16" bronze edition of 10 - Release Date 7/23/2017
This
was such an enjoyable commission to do. I love historical things and my
mother has told me stories of how she and her family gathered around
the all-important radio to hear their special shows. She grew up on a
dairy farm in Ohio during the Great Depression and World War II and the
radio, especially in remote farm areas was a life-line to the world, the
news and was often a source of comfort and company. The woman who
commissioned this bronze is honoring her husband and his passion for
reading and their local library. He actually learned to read by
listening to the radio announcer reading the Sunday Funny papers. This
is the clay original - the 'paper' is sculpted in wax and has cartoons
etched into the surface.
The sculpture measures 16" long and is
currently at the foundry being cast in a bronze edition of 10. It will
be mounted onto a shaped hardwood base with a turntable on the bottom
for rotation of the finished sculpture. The first of this bronze edition
of "Sunday Comics" is going to the Walker Branch Library in Walker,
Michigan.
I am working on a new commissioned sculpture for a library. A woman wanted to make a donation in memory of her husband, a life-long lover of libraries. Apparently this man learned to read in the 1930's by following along and listening to the radio announcer reading the Sunday comics. The sculpture will be about 16" long and feature a young boy reading newspaper comics to the radio laying on a braided rug. I will be taking a bit of artistic license, making the radio and newspaper a tad smaller than actual size for the sake of composition and story-telling.
am working on a new commissioned sculpture for a library. A woman
wanted to make a donation in memory of her husband, a life-long lover of
libraries. Apparently this man learned to read in the 1930's by
following along and listening to the radio announcer reading the Sunday
comics. The sculpture will be about 16" long and feature a young boy
reading newspaper comics to the radio laying on a braided rug. I will be
taking a bit of artistic license, making the radio and newspaper a tad
smaller than actual size for the sake of composition and story-telling. -
See more at:
http://kiplingerpandy.com/blog/new-commission-sculpture.html#sthash.qJsEr8oG.dpuf
am working on a new commissioned sculpture for a library. A woman
wanted to make a donation in memory of her husband, a life-long lover of
libraries. Apparently this man learned to read in the 1930's by
following along and listening to the radio announcer reading the Sunday
comics. The sculpture will be about 16" long and feature a young boy
reading newspaper comics to the radio laying on a braided rug. I will be
taking a bit of artistic license, making the radio and newspaper a tad
smaller than actual size for the sake of composition and story-telling. -
See more at:
http://kiplingerpandy.com/blog/new-commission-sculpture.html#sthash.qJsEr8oG.dpuf
am working on a new commissioned sculpture for a library. A woman
wanted to make a donation in memory of her husband, a life-long lover of
libraries. Apparently this man learned to read in the 1930's by
following along and listening to the radio announcer reading the Sunday
comics. The sculpture will be about 16" long and feature a young boy
reading newspaper comics to the radio laying on a braided rug. I will be
taking a bit of artistic license, making the radio and newspaper a tad
smaller than actual size for the sake of composition and story-telling. -
See more at:
http://kiplingerpandy.com/blog/new-commission-sculpture.html#sthash.qJsEr8oG.dpuf
I'm behind in my blog so I had to combine posts for this sculpture work in progress. I started the project with this sketch and when approved I cut up my clay (Jmac Classic) and placed it on the warming mat to soften. Next I built the wire armature to scale.
After that I began cutting small strips of flattened clay and braiding the clay to make the oval rug.
Once the rug was completed I set it aside - I will go back and soften and refine later. For now I will sculpt the boy, newspaper and radio separately so I don't damage the clay rug.
First I add clay for the boy and block in all the forms. Once the basic anatomy, form and proportions are in place I will go back in and start refining the boy.
Next I will begin working on the newspaper and the radio.
After a bit of thinking and searching the internet for ideas, I decided to try out a foot warming pad because it is very energy efficient and also likely to be safer than the lightbulb method.
So I ordered a foot warmer and finally a hi/low plug to control the temp a bit and it's working out great.
First I ordered the foot warming pad off Amazon to try out. It only draws 90 watts with a temp of 130 degrees. After using it a bit I found that 130˚ is a bit too high and I would alternate between pad on and pad off once the clay got too warm. Since it was working well, I went ahead and ordered the hi/low plug attachment from Amazon. I only used it a couple of days and already know it was a good addition. Once the clay reaches a toasty temp on Hi I turn it to Low to keep it warm without melting.
All in all, I'm very pleased with this new system. I place tinfoil on the heating pad and then arrange chunks of clay on the foil- as I take warm clay off the pad, I drop more cold clay onto the pad.
It does take a bit longer for the pad to warm up the clay than the light-bulb, but it is more consistent without the burning/melting hotspots. Only real drawback is that the clay really needs to be in direct contact with the pad surface so you are more limited in the amount of clay you can warm at a time. In the future I may try putting the pad into a styrofoam box to trap the ambient heat and put in more clay but for the moment and for the cost, this is working quite well. Especially in winter in Colorado it is so much nicer to sculpt with buttery-warm oil-based clay than hard chunks.
After years of using my original clay warmer hot box, I decided I wanted to try something new and more energy efficient. Plus, while the styrofoam hot box works really well, it can sometimes work too well, especially for softer clays like Chavant's Clayette in Soft and cause them to melt or have hot spots that can burn your hands if you aren't careful.
Now that the big show is finished it's time to catch
up on the work that backlogged. I have a new wax of "Bareback Bookworm"
on my desk that I need to finish chasing so it can get to the foundry
and also need a new wax pour made for "Do you know me still?" Both of
these are going to be in the 2016 Women Artists of the West 46th
National Exhibition and the American Women Artists 2016 Annual Master
and Signature Show.
One handy though expensive tool is my Kerr
Ultra Waxer 2. You can purchase a variety of heads to plug into either
of the two hot tool handles and you can also dial in different temps for
both of them. Additionally you can heat metal tools using an alcohol
torch burner to cut, melt and manipulate the wax. Unfortunately,
wax castings really come as perfect replicas of your original clay and I
can often spend 6-10 hours on a wax - resculpting areas that are
missing or marred by bubbles and other problems not to mention the seams
that come from the mold.
There is also a large pour spout that
needs to be in the mold in order to have a place to pour the hot wax
into the mold. This is called the sprue and when the wax sprue is cut
off there is a gaping hole and needs to be filled and repaired before
the piece is cast in bronze.
Here you see a boot before and after
chasing - filling in missing spots and bubbles, cutting off protrusions
and generally cleaning up the wax.
In the case of the hand and
book (removed from the original clay sculpture and molded and cast
separately) the entire thumb is missing thanks to an air bubble in the
wax casting. That means that I will melt and attach wax to resculpt the
entire thumb.
I received a commission from the Texas State Fair to
sculpt an award to be cast in bronze. It is loosely based off their
iconic monumental "Big Tex" that welcomes people to the Texas State Fair.
The finished sculpture is cast in bronze and mounted to Texas limestone base. The first
bronze sculpture award that I created for the Texas State Fair was
awarded to Chief David Brown of Dallas Police Department. Here is a quick snap of the sculpture in the board room of the Texas State Fair.
I've been posting to my webpage blog and forgetting to post here too. So I'll combine a few of my web posts for you here.
Started sculpting Native American Sacagawea in Clayette Soft. This is a really creamy and buttery clay that I would recommend for larger and looser works. I didn't intend to finish this and thought it would be a quick study but I ended up liking it so continued. I feel the clay is far too soft for detailed work this small. In fact I ended up switching to Jmac medium and hard for the dress and purse details because Clayette soft was simply too soft for this.
That said, I really do like the clay a lot. Perhaps medium would have been a better choice for me but I now have a lot of soft on hand. So my next sculpt will be large so I can use it as it was intended.
I really wanted this sculpture to be about putting myself in Sacagawea's place and feeling what she may have felt. If you remember your history, she was abducted from her Northwest Coastal tribe when a young girl by the Sioux and taken east as a captive. She was eventually married to a French Trapper and just before beginning her adventures with her husband and Lewis and Clark, she had her baby, Pompy.
So I wanted to capture her expression as she came to realize she was finally home. Surely she felt apprehension, anxiety, hopefulness and happiness all at once. She did, indeed meet with her brother and by accounts it was a joyful reunion.
The working title for this piece is "Do you know me still?"
This year I had decided that I wanted to branch out from purely portrait and figurative works to include animals and wildlife. It's always a good idea to try to learn and be exposed to new techniques and styles whenever possible too.
With that in mind, I chose a horse sculpting workshop by Rod Zullo. It featured new techniques in armature building, making a portable sculpting stand to take on location and sculpting using silhouette.
He recommends Jmac Clay in brown but as I had a lot of Jmac Tan in stock, I chose to use that instead. The bonus was that the cream color of the tan didn't absorb the Arizona heat like the dark brown clay does, so my work didn't melt and sag in the heat like the other clay. Happy accident. I simply like the lighter clay because it is easier on my eyes.
We started by building a simple but sturdy armature and then went on location for observing and sculpting horses from life. We were very fortunate to go to a lovely estate with some world-class horses to sculpt from.
After blocking in a simple straight silhouette form of the horse we selected a pose of our choosing and went to work fleshing out the work. While the photos may make the work look larger, this piece is about 22" long, I think. It is currently being crated and shipped from Scottsdale to my studio in Fort Collins so I can continue working on it soon.
Most people think of pencils when they think of
sketching, however
you can sketch 3d too. It's really cold
and snowy so I didn't want to
drive to my cold studio today so I grabbed
what I had handy to do a
little clay sketching as a warm up before
getting to work today. This study was sculpted using Chavant Clayette
Soft and as
most of my tools are at the shop I used a
flat stick and an old
paintbrush and of course, my hands.
The
great thing about 3d
sketching is that is warms you up, allows
you to work on problems and
you can leave it on a shelf to reflect on
for future works or recycle the clay and make something else. It is the
act of the motion, the
thought that was the journey and reward -
the destination and final
results aren't important. That's the
beauty of sketching!
This is a great way to loosed yourself up and
allow you explore without the commitment of a full piece of work and no
worries about whether you are creating something wonderful or ruining
things by making changes....you know that it temporary and can let go of
the anxiety - something you can't always do if you are working.
I
enjoyed this 30-45 minute study - it gave me time to reflect on the
forms without over-thinking things and I realize how much I miss the
freedom of that. Note to self- take more time for these sketches and
warmups - it just may be the faster road to improvement of your work.
"Eleanor" was chosen by the judges as First Place in Sculpture for this year’s Best & Brightest Show at Scottsdale Artists School. It was also chosen by the school to be this year’s Purchase Award.
This honor is especially poignant for me because I received a scholarship from the Scottsdale Artist's School to attend a Sandy Scott workshop in 2015 and while there I would sneak into the school early just to peruse the halls, admiring the works on permanent display, photographing them with my iPad and thinking that I would love to have one of my works in those halls one day.
I am grateful that "Someday" came today.
Show opens Friday 1/8/2016 with a free and open reception from 5-7pm and runs through 2/27/2016.
Scottsdale Artists’ School
3720 North Marshall Way
Scottsdale, AZ 8525
I received a commission to sculpt a bas relief medallion about 24" x 24". This sculpture will be cast in Forton or Aqua Resin.
To start, I scaled up my drawing and laid it out on a piece of hard foam.
Then I traced the shape out onto the foam board using a marker.
Next I used my hot wire tools to cut the foam away. This stuff is toxic so I was careful to work in the garage and wear a mask!
Once everything was cut out, I drew in some guidelines for the shapes and began carving away using a serrated knife.
When I had the basic forms started, I refined them using files, rasps and sandpaper to further define the medallion.
Finally
I put on a coat of primer to seal it. This serves two purposes: to keep
the crumbly bits out of the clay and to give an even 'tooth' for the
clay to adhere.
I'll let this dry overnight and then I'll come back with some warm oil-based clay and begin sculpting over this armature foam.
