To The Foundry!

Dropped these off to Jeb Wood at Independent Casting on Friday. I was particularly happy with the back of the chair, which is coated with Bondo, and smooth as a baby's bottom. I'm really excited to see how they look in aluminum. Bright, is my guess. There's a nice contrast between that the face, which has a nice, slightly jittery, texture. 

In the meantime, progress continues on the back of the love seat. I've got the tri-pod set up on the ceiling, and I'm hoping to make another stop motion movie of the process as it unfolds. I've also got a process video to post that I'll put up as soon as it uploads to Vimeo. 

Process Bolus #2

More process images with very little context or explanation. Most of what you see below occured between 2/22 and 2/25. Many thanks to my parents, who came and took the big kids for the weekend, and thanks to my wife for her general patience. 

Foam core mock-up of the love seat

DIY ventilation system - AC filter attached to box fan (thanks, Robin Mandel)

Trying to figure out the compound curves of the back

 Using (mostly made up) grids to make the opposing curves consistent 

Final design printed and adhered to foam core form

Love seat back roughed out in urethane foam

Castilene applied

Process Bolus #1

OK. Clearly there's not going to be time to get everything uploaded with any kind of narrative attached, and I'd like to start posting images as they happen, instead of saving everything, so I'm going to just post all the images I have thus far, and hope they form some kind of cohesive narrative.

Preparing to transfer drawing onto urethane foam form

Drawing transferred

 Rough shaping of urethane foam

Castilene applied to foam

Modeling the Castilene

Back of model coated with Bondo

Modeling mostly finished

 Final seat design (all designs done in photoshop)

Back with seat design

Roughing out foam

Seat design roughed out in urethane

Castilene applied to urethane

Tests and Supplies

Once it became clear that I was, in fact, going to be commissioned do something for AC, there was a frantic period of figuring out what that would be, and how it would be produced.

The various possibilities that were floated are too numerous to detail here (laser cut steel, massive milled urethane foam forms, etc.), but even before the general shape of the final project was agreed upon, I was collecting possible materials, and doing initial tests. Here's a bunch of Renshape and Butterboard high density urethane foam samples I got for 25 bucks from Freeman Supply. Some great stuff in here. Most of it was too hard for my purposes, but I love having this kind of thing around the shop for inspiration, if nothing else.

And here's an image of some 10 lb. sign foam I got from Sam Schartz Sign Supplies in Philadelphia. Lovely guys, and they have 2" x 4' x 8' sheets in stock. I brushed Castilene, which is a great modeling compound, onto the sign foam, and it looked like it would be a viable strategy. I spent a little time kicking myself for not having come up with this for the big lady, and moved on. 

Long Time / Change Of Plans

Ok. It's been a terribly long time since the last update. Forgive me. Things have taken a surprising turn, and keeping the blog up to date has been the last thing on my mind.

First and foremost, with the help of my able assistant Amy, I was able to pull a complete casting of Mama's In The Arbor.

I ended up using the Polytek 1512x with whatever the name of the fabric they sell is (kind of a finely woven tyvek). The material works pretty well, but it is REALLY sticky, so I had extremely hard time getting it out of the mold. Also, there are a couple of places where the two parts weren't mixed sufficiently, so the material didn't set up properly. In short, this is an extremely expensive and labor intensive proof of concept, but not the final. On the plus side, I love it, it looks pretty much like I hoped it would, and the initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. 

Here's an image of the back, which I think looks kind of great, and which is heavily, heavily reinforced with various gauges of bent steel rod. 

This was all accomplished toward the end of last semester, sometime between late November and early December, and I was trying to get motivated to start work on the FINAL final, when I went to a meeting with Lance Fung of Fung Collaboratives, and had to completely shift gears. 

Lance has been engaged by Atlantic City to develop a series of art parks in some of the vacant lots near the boardwalk. The first site, Artlantic:Wonder, "featur[es] works by acclaimed artists Robert Barry, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, John Roloff, and Kiki Smith in collaboration with New York landscape design firms Balmori Associates and Philadelphia-based Cairone & Kaupp." (from the artlantic blog). 

After our conversation in Dec., Lance commissioned me to make a series of sculptures for the next project, Artlantic:Glorious. Things have been full sprint/crazy headlong run every since.  

The Joy Of A Productive Day

Lovely. Full day in the studio, working around the rotation in true ADHD style.

First, managed to get some good work in on The Lady.



Even by my standards, this is a crazy process. Using 5/8ths inch rope from Home Depot to serve as the basis for some of the vines, and as a way to get a preview of the composition.





I've got a terrifying amount of work to do on this, and I'm hating the plasticene I'm using, but I'm happy with the way it's looking. You can get a glimpse of the drawing I'm working from on the right. I drew only a small section before I decided that making it was going to make more sense than designing it, but that little part has turned out to be a big help.  

With James busily casting figures in the new molds, during those moments when the (goddamn) plastince was warming up I could turn around and work on composing the new framed relief.









This is a great way for me to compose these pieces. Dropping in, almost unconsciously, without trying to "solve" the whole thing in a sitting feels much more productive, and the results feel much less labored.

Finally, after lunch, I made myself knuckle down and finish the smaller framed piece, "You And Your Romantic Notions". No pictures of that this round, because I'm shooting the final slides in a bit, but soon.

Lovely.

Almost Getting Started (Dang Kids)

The problem with being an artist with 3 children is that you have 3 children, and sometimes they all decide to get sick on a studio day. I still managed to sneak in an hour or two here and there, but it certainly wasn't the productive day I had in mind.

I've surprised myself by starting this round of intensive studio time (thank you Stockton and National Sculpture Society) by making a maquette of the large figure. Probably makes sense - everything else I think I know what I'm doing. The big figure remains a bit unresolved. Good idea to get that started now, and give it some time to develop.

Something I would normally yell at my students about - I need to get the face finished before I really invest in the body. It's too hard to work the proportion of the body if the face isn't right, particularly in an instance like this, where the whole thing hinges on the expression. I'm not there yet (1 x 1 inches of supersculpey is not necessarily the place to capture facial subtleties), but I'm close enough that I can move forward. VERY excited to be working again.



Is there anything better than drinking a few beers in the studio on a hot night in May? There is not.

"Paved...."