reading girl update

Don has gotten the sculpture to a point where I can take over. He has "pointed up" various areas in the face (eyes, nose, corners of the mouth) using calipers.

One of the techniques when carving is to position the model in a direct line from the sculpture. Then, you
can check by eye what stone needs to be removed.
This
is a side view, as I began working on the hand and arm.

You can see the progress, from the last picture.

You can see she that has come a long way in a short amount of time, however, there is still a lot of work to go...

I found this strangely patterned leaf while walking on our property.

This is a Great Spangled Fritillary ( had to consult my guide book on that one). It allowed me to get quite close to it.

This is a little honey bee that was in the house and was starving, so I put some sugar water in a spoon and took her outside.
I discovered this tiny flower and flower bud growing on our property. The flower is maybe 1/8" across.

Meanwhile, back in Kentucky....

While I was in Colorado carving butterflies into wax, Don was blocking the "Reading Girl" with a chainsaw. When I got back I had to begin work on a maquette as I am a finalist for a commission in Terre Haute, Indiana, so Don continues with blocking out the sculpture until I finish the maquette and can begin carving.

With temperatures in the 90s, it was too hot to work outside anymore, so Don moved the sculpture into the studio. Here he has begun shaping the stone by finding "points" from the model (measuring up and over using various measuring devices, squares, calipers, etc.). You can barely see the maquette in the background...

And here is the other view, now you can see the maquette and that there is a significant amount of stone to be removed...

Don has further refined the form...

You can see the significant change from earlier as Don gets the stone closer to the form of the maquette.
And now for some flowers...

A Dayflower.

A close up of a Deptford pink...

An unusual and tropical looking plant, the Passion Flower. This is the yellow variety.

A trip to Colorado

I just returned from a trip to Loveland, Colorado to do finish work on the Home of the Innocents sculpture entitled "Metamorphosis". The blanket portion of the sculpture has a pattern of butterflies, front and back. The blanket could not be thick enough to pull a mold from both sides (it would end up weighing too much), so I had to go to the foundry and carve the individual butterflies into the back of the wax blanket.

Here are the waxes for the two sculptures at Art Castings of Colorado (great place, great people). I will
devote another post to just the foundry and some of what I saw there.

This is part of the "Metamorphosis" sculpture.

Sal, a wax technician at Art Castings, holds up the baby from "Acension" so I can be sure that everything looks right.

This is the blanket with all the butterflies that I carved directly into the wax. I had to make so many, many butterflies - I was seeing them in my sleep.

After I was done with the wax, I got to go up to Rocky Mountain National Park, which is only about 50 miles from Loveland.

This time of year, there are lots of babies. Here is a herd of elk with their calves.

This bull elk came right up next to the car, making it easy to get a good picture.

This is a variety of Orchid that is native to the region.

This was the highlight of the trip, being able to go across Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved road in the United States. I'm on a path leading to the peak of Sundance mountain, which is over 12,400 feet above sea level. And yes, I got to the peak with a 360 degree view of the mountains, pretty cool.

As I was leaving, a thunderstorm came up and with it, a rainbow. A great ending to a great trip.

The stone arrives for the Charles City commission of "Girl Reading"

Vessels Trucking - that's Leon Vessels, owner over on the right watching- delivers the rock for the Charles City job.

The raw block is much larger than I need so sections need to be removed. First of all a large section needs to be
removed so that the locally available crane can remove it from the truck. Don drills holes and puts in feathers and wedges in order to spit off the section of stone.

The wedges are hammered in until the stone cracks.

The crane arrives and we remove the stone from the truck to steel wheeled cart next to the shop.

Using the model, it was determined which sections would need to be removed using the chain saw. If we didn't have the saw I would have taken the stone to a sawyer in Bedford Indiana to make the necessary cuts to this piece. Although I couldn't have had the first right angle cut made there, they would only be able to cut curners off.

Don takes the saw across the face of the block, cutting the maximum depth of 18"

Then he makes another cut from the top. There will be an area in the middle of the stone that is not cut, but wedges and a hammer will form a break across that section of stone.

Don hammers in the wedge

After the remaining stone has broken, Don can lever off the section of stone. Going...

Going..

gone.

Home of the Innocents mold work finish

The mold work comes to a completion on the two sculptures for the Home of the Innocents which will commemorate the work of Sister Emily Cooper and the over 200 children

buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, KY.The hands are readied for the mold work.These are two butterflies. They will be placed on the blanket in various patterns, emerging from the blanket and flying up from the children's blanket.This is the blanket, the spaces where the emerging butterflies are to be attached are marked on the blanket.

The sculpture has two coats of mold material, now it is ready to get shims. Steve applies the material into which the shims will be placed.Attaching the shims.Her shims all in place, she is now ready for the rest of the mold material.After all the layers of mold material are applied, she gets a mother mold of plaster. After that

dries, the mold is removed.This is the inside of the blanket mold.

Steve helps pack up the molds for the trip to Loveland, Colorado. The sculptures will be cast at

Art Casting of Colorado.
An assortment of mold sections.

A head and two hands is within this plaster. Don wraps a mold section in preparation of it's journey. It will then be placed with all the other mold sections into the crate behind Don. R & L Trucking picks up the crates.

Loading a crate with our truck.

Steve from R&L and Don position the crate on the truck.