Progress report...

I don't have much to show yet, but I thought I would give a progress report. Our last bronze pour was April 1st, and it went very well. It was a pretty large pour relatively, as we needed 3 full crucibles (each holds ~100 lbs of bronze).

I have two pieces from this pour, which together set me back a little over $300 for the bronze and the shop supplies. I broke both pieces from them molds last Wednesday, and they both cast beautifully. This is great news, because I'm still using the short cut method of skipping the mother mold process. Usually you sculpt the form you would like to cast, then using silicone you make a rubber cast of the form. Then, you pour hot wax into the mother mold to make a replica of the original. You refine the wax mold, proceed with sprue and gates, then build the plaster mold. The plaster mold is then heated for a day to totally melt and evaporate out all the wax leaving the void where the bronze will pour into. By skipping the mother mold step, I sculpt directly in wax. This results in a faster turn around time, but I have no backup in case something goes wrong in the plaster casting, or bronze pour. If it goes wrong, I've lost that sculpture entirely.

The first sculpture I broke open is my dragon head. In the interest of minimizing the mold size, and therefore the cost, this piece was fairly tightly cramped. In order to pour this in one mold, I needed to cut the horns off the head, and gate them as a part of the cast. So, it took nearly 3 hours just to saw off the sprue and gates. I stopped with that, since I really want to finish my "secret" project first.

My second sculpture from that pour was good, but there was a void near where the gate attached which I needed to fill with some small scraps and a welder. I removed all the excess gates and sprues, then cleaned up the piece pretty much and did the welding (oxy/acetylene). Most of the weld went well, but there is one spot I need to go back and fill again. I think I will get set up on the MIG welder tonight and weld that one spot, and then also I can work on welding the horns back onto my dragon's head.

Tonight I will take some pictures.

Some projects in the works...

It's been 3 weeks now since I posted, Christmas has come and gone. We drove to Houston to visit my older sister and her beau. We had an excellent time, and even though my sister's house was stuffed full of people and pets, things went very smoothly. Of note ceramics-wise during the Christmas break is that I received some great presents for my studio, including some great new tools, some slip molding forms, a hefty gift certificate to "Clay World", and some wonderful and very useful books.

So here are some new projects I'm diving into;

1) A 20" hemispherical moonscape made from fiber clay (craters, rough surface). After bisque firing it will become the form for casting a replica of it in bronze. The bronze version will eventually become my son Christian's bed side lamp shade (his room is done in a space theme). The ceramic version I will eventually glaze and fire as well, and use suspended from his ceiling or mounted on his wall (where it will be less likely to be broken).

2) A glaze study of the 30 glazes available at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts on MB clay (new clay for me). I will make a bunch of coffee cups all the same size and shape, then use each glaze as a primary on the exterior, develop a series of surface designs (carving, impressions, stamps, sprigs, etc) then choose a complementary glaze for decoration. I can throw most of these at home and bring them to the Art Center to glaze them. This is akin to doing a tile study, but more interesting than tiles.

3) I'm currently making a 12" tall bronze dragon, which is small enough in mass to not need an internal mold. I'm shaping it directly in wax, so again, I can skip some steps in the lost wax casting process. I'm building it as a part of a bronze casting class I'm taking from Heidi Hoy at the Minnetonka Center of the Arts. The dragon is almost completed from what I can tell, and when I asked Heidi if it was done she said, "We have a saying around here... We'll let you know when you're done." The photo above is one of Heidi's works.

4) We need to replace the tile in our bathroom. I sat down last week to develop a non-square repeating pattern using a computer graphic design tool. Angel wants the bathroom to have a butterfly motif, so some tiles will be butterfly shaped, and then others will form the shapes between the butterflies. There are about 500 tiles roughly 4" tiles needed for this project.

5) I want to make 12"x12" tiles for the floor in my studio. Again, I want to (lightly) carve and glaze each tile differently to make it look like one large ancient mosaic pattern. I figure the floor tiles will need to be 1/4" thick.

6) I still need to get my kiln's set up and finish the full set up in my basement studio.

It seems overwhelming I know, but I'm not the kind of person who gets discouraged with a mountain of work... I get busy.