etsy.com

check out my etsy shop: www.wellsculpt.etsy.com

mold making

I don't want to present the illusion that I am a prolific sculptor, constantly creating and reaping the bounties of my artistic font, as that is far from the truth. I am slugging it out with the rest of you (us) in a day to day job with various opportunistic gigs as financial filler. I might have mentioned the building of a foundry as part of my upstate move. Without a venue, a foundry is really a concept, rather, a collection of equipment allowing an individual to cast metal into molds producing statuary. Metal casting was part of my education, but practical application of that learned knowledge involved a lot of reading and experimentation. That said, I take on work as a mold maker and metal caster as a supplement to other labors that pay the bills.

Currently I am making a mold of a female figure made of plastilene, done by Carol Huth in the 1950s. Carol is the aunt of an associate Andy Huth, an artist and photographer. The mold will be stored in my studio until a later date, when the piece will be cast.

pics

http://www.myartspace.com/viewer/gallery/?subscriberid=de8e5cxxu9tj4jn1&gallery_id=9ujvu4we3agmz0s1

click above to see a new gallery of old work (2008) on my myartspace.com page

a metaphor for life?

In a fast paced world, perhaps one of the most archaic art forms may be stone carving. A day in the studio may produce a pile of dust and rubble. Then just before you shut the lights and close the door, you look at the stone and ask yourself, "have I really been in here all day or was I abducted by aliens again?"

Here is today's work in progress.

a new beginning

A new studio, in a new home in a new town.

(to the right, the old studio: an extra bedroom in our last apartment)

We are entering our third month in the new place. (new space, below) As a sculptor, one accumulates a vast collection of items that can be bulky and are usually heavy. Helped by family and friends, all agreed, "you've got a lot of STUFF!" My wife Kristen DeFontes accused me of being a hoarder and a pack-rat, which may be so. But to me, everything has potential as material and must be saved, because you never know if you might need it. She works on paper, a material easier stored and transported.

check it out: http://www.kristendefontes.com/

My good buddy Jeff drew the short straw and helped out on day 02 of the move: the third truckload carrying the foundry equipment and the bulk of my studio. Materials (buckets of clay, sand, plaster, cement, scrap metal, bronze ingots, hunks of marble, wood) tools, kilns, the melt furnace, crucibles and tongs, tools, workbenches, sculpture, molds, firebricks, lumber, hardware, tools (...did i mention tools?) and a variety of other nonsense that I may or may not ever use was what filled this boxtruck. By the end of the day, the need for water and rest was greater than the desire to celebrate our triumph with a couple of cool bottles of suds. So Jeff went back to Saratoga and I went back to Schoharie, to begin to settle in.