Home of the Innocents bronzes

This is ascension. It has yet to be sandblasted and have a patina applied

Here is Metamorphosis with butterflies flying from the blanket.

A side view of the butterflies

This is Art Castings Foundry in Loveland, Colorado where the sculptures for the Home of the Innocents are being cast.

The waxes are dipped into ceramic slurry (a 14 day process to build up a sufficient shell) and are then put into a burnout
oven where the wax is melted out and the ceramic shell hardens. When the shells come out of the oven they are ready to be filled with bronze.

Here is the bronze being poured. It is over 2,000 degrees fahrenheit.

These are the areas where individual sculptures are "chased" Chasing means that the places where the gates and sprues were attached, as well as welded areas, are carved to duplicate the original surface of the sculpture.

While posting pictures from my trip to the Colorado foundry, I found a couple of images that I thought were interesting.
This is an odd flower, no idea what it is. It had been raining and the light was getting low, so I had to use a flash. But that made it stand out more from the background.

This is the summit of Sundance Mountain.

Charles City sculpture "Reading Girl" installed

Here is the almost finished sculpture. I have finished the cloth texture on her left, and have crayoned what I need to carve
on her right side. I have also made marks on her fingers as to where texture needs to be applied.

She is rigged up and ready to be loaded.

Derrick of JBB, inc. loads the sculpture with the crane while Don steadies it.

She is loaded and ready to go...

The sculpture crosses the Mississipi river.

Don positions the truck while Doug Kamm of Kamm Excavating sets up the crane in preparation for moving the sculpture into the site.

Don signals to Doug while Veronica Litterer, my contact person, watches from a safe distance.

This is a llama that is brought in to visit the children at the daycare across the street. It was just hilarious to see him
riding along, just like a dog, he seems to really enjoy it.

David, Dan and Shawn of Outdoor Designs Inc. discuss setting the pavers.

David of Outdoor Design Inc. lays the pavers down to determine their new line. The pavers will then be individually cut so that they form a curve.
The sculpture is covered to protect it from dust.

Don watches as David, Dan and Shawn pile dirt in around the sculpture.

Jeff Otto, owner of garden center "Otto's Oasis", plants the Vinca Minor, which is an evergreen groundcover. The variety is Atropurpurea and will they grow approximately 4-6" high and have a purplish pink flowers in the spring. The plants should fill the area beneath the book and hands nicely, without overwhelming them. The flowers represent the ideas that become a part of us when we read.

The sculpture, as seen from the side. The plants will fill in around her back and below her arm.

Jim Arnt, a local resident looks at the completed "Reading Girl".

The rest of this post will show things that I have found around the Wildlife Area. I have no idea what plant this is. The flowers are very tiny. They don't even read as flowers a few feet away.

I believe this is called an Ambush bug, kind of looks like a cross between a crab and a dinosaur.

This is some type of grasshopper. What a face!

Another Reading girl update

I have worked on her right hand and arm today. Having the maquette in her lap helps me to see the detail of the fingers.


This is the side view of the sculpture. She stills needs a great deal of refining....



I am working out the earthwork and the plantings for the lower half of the sculpture. I have placed pins where the plants will go. The plants will grow 4 -6" high and fill the area between the berm and the sculpture. As the location for the sculpture is
shady I will be using Vinca Minor for the planting. The particular variety I have selected is called Atropupurpea and has a purple bloom and has a more prostrate form than other varieties of vinca minor.

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.