Blog

In between coats of rubber on two of my newest sculptures I decided to weld together this table top nude sculpture I made. A couple of months ago my studio mate and myself decided to purchase a welder. We both are bronze sculptors and it seemed like a smart decision as opposed to paying someone to do what we both know how to do. Fortunately I was taught tig welding by a well known sculptor here in town and can assemble table top pieces as well as life size bronzes, although I’m not very good at it and half the time I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing, lol. So far I haven’t had any close calls with weld drips running into my arm or leg (knock on wood) so that is good. This sculpture is about 12″ high and there were 3 sections to join together as well as 2 core holes to fill in which were about 1″ diameter. After I welded it all together I chased (grinded and blended) the welds, sandblasted, and patinaed. This is why bronze sculptures are so dang expensive; TIME CONSUMING! I spent about 2 1/2 hrs from the welding to the patina stages. Well, It is 1am and figure I should get to sleep now.

 

 

I’ve been working on a sculpture for the Norsk Hostfest in Minot, ND for about 2 months or so. The sculpture is about 12″ high and bronze castings will be used as an award to volunteers at the annual festival. At this point it is just about approved of in clay, there are a couple of minor changes as the client has specified them over the phone. Hopefully next week I can start the mold making of it. I am working with one other person on this (in addition to the director of the Norsk Hostfest) and normally this can be a royal pain in the patuty (with conflicting opinions, etc etc.), but fortunately in this case it has been great! The gentleman that has been helping a great deal lives in Manhattan and is a good friend of Chester’s so his input is very valuable. All of the suggestions (and there have been plenty of them) have tremendously improved the piece. If I showed a before and after it would be clear.

Gosh, is this getting monotonous already? I haven’t figured out what to say and how much to say and when to post and how much information people read on this. BTW, this is my first post so I’m kinda getting the feel for this. My girlfriend Jessica helped me get my page setup. Luckily, I didn’t use the hammer to unleash my frustrations… yet! I’ve wanted to setup a blog for a couple of years, actually after watching the movie Julie and Julia I was so ready to do it, but I gave up the next day as it seemed difficult to setup and maintain. Well, we’ll see how long I continue, but for now I’m gonna blog about 1 of 2 of my current projects I’m working on.

So… the sculpture is looking fairly good. In my opinion it is finished. I have tried to keep the looseness that all of my fine art sculptures have, but it is something that is hard to do on commissioned work as they generally take much longer than a piece that I whip out of my head.