The finished waxes with sprues, pour cups, and a few extra vents.

Moving to Howard’s studio, I’m beginning the process of dipping the wax in a ceramic slurry mix (colloidial silica) and refractory silica sand. This is ceramic shell moldmaking. The systems in his studio are really well-designed and working there is easy and efficient. See the beautiful chartreus color of the slurry:

The first coat is “clear”, without sand. This preserves the surface detail.

After drying, the wet second coat is bonded with fine sand.

The next 8 coats use a coarser sand. The shell for a piece this size should be about 3/8th inch thick. Each coat should dry overnight – it will take some time to finish this mold. Maybe I can get by there on my lunch hour?

Now is the time to add the sprues to each piece. A sprue is a downward channel the bronze will follow into the mold. The mold should fill quickly, so that the metal doesn’t cool before the mold fills, and completely, so there is no area in which air is trapped, causing a void in the finished piece. This is a matter is visualizing the flow of metal through the piece as you turn it to discover the optimum position which will accomplish both. Of course, there is some intuition and experience involved too, and every piece must be considered uniquely. In some cases there are vents which give a path for air to leave the mold from areas where it might otherwise be trapped. I naturally tend to overdo this sort of thing, but since these pieces have some thin and narrow sections, I want to be sure that the metal will not “freeze-out” or cool anywhere, so I have placed a sprue into each hand foot and head to get metal into every area. As well, all those sprues can serve as vents too.

I decided to do a third splash because people tend to gender-ize them too much when there are just two.

All three, at a good stage of progress, about three good work sessions apiece,but I’ll need to decide how much more to go on from here in texture and smoothness.

God I love Winter. This is when I get all the best designs done. Here are the ones I’m starting with for this project, titled “Splash”.

The goal is to get these graphics to viable fully modeled 3D sculptures.

So, it’s out to the shop to get some work done. Another unglamorous picture of how sculpture gets made. The sun is shining and that’s nice.

Since these are going to be bronze castings from wax models, I make some wax sheets, use the design as a template to cutout the figure, stack them up like a relief map, and add soft wax to flesh out the forms and emphasize the third dimension. Dip the whole thing in warm water and bend and shape it. Working outside in the barn with the wood stove going is actually very helpful; the cold air keeps the wax firm and holding it’s shape. Moving it nearer to the stove warms up the surface of the wax so you can smooth it, without warming the core so much that it starts moving where you don’t want it to. Take it outside for a few minutes to really get hard. When working with wax in the summertime it is all the time too soft to get decent results. It gets too soft to hold it’s shape right and you end up putting it in the icebox to chill and firm up. Of course you are sitting in the sun in a T shirt and shorts instead of long underwear and Carharts. On the other hand, Winter, you are not tempted to go skateboarding or swimming at the lake.

Second Splash:

Several things are coming together to give me a direction to go in next. I have been interested for some time in Indian Folk Bronzes. These are mostly images of Hindu Gods used on traditional household altars. They are informal, yet have the same value and symbolism as “high” temple art. The difference between these and the others is only of context.

I have been wanting to do work that is more spontaneous. After my last project which was over a year in length, nice as that was, I think I need to loosen up with some quick and smaller things. A little more expressionist, not so engineered and analytical. I’ve some things like this from before, nicely gestural and lively.

I recently met an artist with a personal bronze foundry he built for himself. I proposed to work with him on his pours in exchange for the chance to do some of my own work there. He has generously invited me access to his studio.