Installing sculptures from Yew Dell show, Art in the Highlands show

The third Yew Dell show has come down and we are removing the sculptures. Some to return home with us, others will be delivered to their new homes. The Mechanical Hand has been at Yew Dell for three years and now it's time to move on.

Demeter will be loaded onto the crane truck as there is not a lot of room on the flat bed truck because of the Hand. Derrick Sheroan of JBB inc. of Hardinsburg operates the crane.

Nexus is going to a new home too. The hook of the crane is lowered into place.

Don steadies Nexus as it is loaded onto the truck. All the sculpture will be strapped down, then we can head out to deliver the work.

Demeter has the shortest path to travel and so she is delivered first.

A footer was prepared for her by Mark Foster. It is slightly raised as there will plantings around her base and I don't want her to be overwhelmed by the plants.

Demeter installed.
The Nexus installation was a bit tricky. It went into a cool old cemetary, but the site was under a tree which made it a little difficult. Derrick and Don looked at how to approach it - there was a gap in the limbs - and slowly and carefully the sculpture was lifted up and over and then down to the site.

This is Robert Maddox, he and his family bought the sculpture as a monument for their parents. He is pictured here on the left, a passerby is standing next to him, his daughters are on the right side of the photo, petting the dog.

Talk about a small world, he is one of the donors that contributed to the commission of the sculptures I did for Home of the Innocents in Cave Hill Cemetary.

Here is nexus with a bench in the foreground.

Nexus installed!

I stopped by Art in the Highlands to check out the work of Jenni Pollard. She is the daughter of the woman who is commissioning the Grizzly for Norton Children's Hospital. I believe that this is Jenni's first weekend Art and Craft show, but she sold $1,000.00 in work. Way to go Jenni!

I ran into BobLockhart at the show too. He's a great sculptor with a number of public commissions. His animal sculptures are wonderful. In this photo he is reading my shirt, it says "Louisville Leopards". They are a percussion group which performs a great deal around Louisville and beyond and has been on HBO. My niece was in the group - kids can be in the Leopards up to the 7th grade or so.

I found this spider under the wheelbarrow. I'm pretty sure it's a black widow - so I moved her to a safer spot for her and me.

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.

Mold work on the Home of the Innocents Sculptures

The sculpture entitled "Ascension" is the first to get a mold applied. Here is the finished sculpture.

The various parts of the sculpture, arms, babies arms and legs and dove get cut apart. This is so each section can be made into a two part mold. A mold release is then sprayed on.Two coats of Polygel 40 applied with paint brushes and now Don draws on a part line - this is where the two parts of the mold will separate. Steve McMillen helps Don by fitting shims to the Dove after applying the first coats of mold materialThe part line half-way down the body. Shims will be attached to the sculpture with polygel 40 combined with polyfiber which thickens it.

The shims are applied. This is plastic bubble sheet which can be purchased from Sculpture Depot in Loveland, Colorado. The bubble sheet was waxed with Trewax prior to use so that the mold material won't stick to it.

The baby's shims.
The sculptures will get approximately 6 coats of mold material.

When the sculptures are completely coated in Polygel, they get a plaster mold which is called a mother mold. The polygel captures the surface of the clay - even fingerprints, while the mother mold provides the basic support for the rubber mold. Without it, the polygel mold would distort.

After drying, the plaster and polygel molds are removed from the clay. Each 2 part section of the sculpture will then be taped back together and readied for shipping to the Foundry - Art Castings of Loveland Colorado.
Duct tape that baby!
The mold for the baby gets taped up and the bottom of the woman sculpture is turned upside down so that the inside of the skirt can be finished. It's much easier to finish this way than lying on my back reaching up inside....

Recently, my cousin Joe Marsh came to visit (he is on the right). My sister Liz is in the middle hidden behind her daughter Bethh, and her son Joey is in the red shirt. Joe, Liz and I (on left) were great friends as kids - we grew up together and went everywhere together. But as we reached adulthood, we kind of went our separate ways, but nows he's back, kind of like a long lost brother.

On Monday May 11, Liz's other son, Danny, had his 17th birthday. We celebrated at Fuji's, a Japanese restaurant in Louisville. Those are onion volcanoes.

The chef throws a ball of rice to Danny. Will he catch it? -----Actually he does!

Fireworks in honor of Danny's birth - a family tradition.

Danny blows out the candles.
In the next post I will show the quarry where I bought the stone for the Reading Girl for Charles City Iowa. It was selected for me by the quarry owner Steve Reed of Reed Quarries. It is an excellent block that I am looking forward to carving. More pics including the turning of a ledge in the next blog posting.