Blog

For the last 3 days I’ve been working off and on on a mid-relief of the model Caroline. It is one of the larger reliefs I’ve done and therefore requires I spend more time on it. What I like about this pose is it is kind of a cross between what I enjoy doing the most in relief form: movement and portraiture. Caroline has studied dance and so just a simple seated pose such as this becomes more than just a sitting. She has beautiful eyes and her glance upwards and her expression implies that she is waiting on a friend, perhaps someone she loves.

On another note, Northern Colorado has been hit hard with flooding, Boulder taking on the worst punishment of all. For the last couple of days it has became clear to me that I, along with many many others, was falling victim to the sad events that were happening; watching videos of roads being destroyed, watching the flood waters down the street from us rolling through parks and destroying homes, hearing about people missing or dying, dealing with a possible shortage of water. Stuff that you simply cannot ignore! Amid all of the chaos happening, I am remembering a couple of lines from a commencement speech given in 2012 by Neil Gaiman: Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art.

Grace in Motion II, 11″x8″ clay for aluminum

This year, 2013, I have made an effort to focus on creating a body of work relief sculpture. What I’m finding as I spend more time creating large commissioned pieces is that I actually enjoy sitting down and making small to medium sized reliefs. They require so little of my energy and I can get one done pretty quickly. In the last 3-4 months I found out that I can cast these in light weight aluminum and patinaed very similarly to a bronze sculpture. And what I learned from the Loveland Sculpture show this year is that people do like them! Although there are limitations to casting in aluminum, such as it is not very malleable and almost impossible for me to figure out how to weld, I can work around this. For example, if I give the foundry a wax that has little stubs in the center the wax is less likely to bow in the middle from it’s own weight, therefore eliminating the need to pound on it to flatten it out. As for the welding, if I keep them smaller than 30″ or so there is no welding required. This is huge!!

This relief Grace in Motion II is of the former Russian ballet dancer Anastasia, one of the models that I hire. This pose fascinates me because it shows off her back muscles while her right foot comes out of the relief giving it life that otherwise wouldn’t be there if it were all low relief. I wanted to make a relief that mimicked Grace in Motion I which was the center of attention of all of my sculptures at this years Loveland Sculpture Invitational. This pose has a little more movement and is quite a bit smaller in size but equally as powerful as the first Grace in Motion.

This piece was sculpted back in late 2011 and I finally had saved up the money to have him cast in bronze. We decided to do the multi-color patina after the sculpture Sowing Seeds, which also had a multi color patina, was installed outdoors. This piece is designed to sit in a garden, we’ll be showing him at the Loveland Sculpture Invitational 2013 in the garden area.

Sowing Seeds, bronze, 53″h x 72″w x 30″d

explaining to the group the installation process

The kids were awesome and helped move the statues to the stone bench so I could position them how it needed to look. 

Discussing the details of installation with Christy

Jessica, myself and Carol

Members of the youth group that helped with installation from Mountain View Presbyterian church