What now?

I'm working on the few waxes that are here and I expect to receive a call from the foundry that the others are ready. If I am lucky then by the end of the week the foundry will have all of the waxes and they will begin the pouring process of Evelyn.  It is so exciting. For the time being, in between working on waxes, I'm resting my hands and preparing for a meeting when I bring back the photograph of Evelyn.


Oh yes, it took us two days to get the studio cleaned up and it is ready for the next project.

The next step- waxes

Once all of the molds are at the foundry, they pour waxes.  For every mold there will be a hollow think wax created.  Because I finished the arms, head and base these are sent back to me first.   What do I do with these?  The wax stage is one more opportunity to add detail, and clean things up.  Remember the rubber molds were in to parts and so there is also the cleaning of seams.   Once I feel I have all of the pieces clean and that they go together correctly, we will start our process of bronze casting.

The wax arm showing the ring still sitting in the mold.

This is the base that Evelyn Sits on.
I have signed the bottom.
Evelyn will be welded to this base.
The base will then be secured to the
floor of the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish
Community Center. 

The wax head of Evelyn. Still showing the pour cup.

Mold making

Sculpture is cut apart in many pieces.
I like that I can work on the area under
the skirt.

 The mold making process is often done by the foundry.  However, I create my own molds. It takes about 2 weeks of time and is very labor intensive.  I'm thankful for the interns and helpers who have come to assist in the last two weeks of mold making.  My husband kept coming down from his clean office and watching me tug, lift and pull and just shakes his head.  My interns say it is better and more physical than working out in the gym.  The mold making process consists of several steps

clay is used as a pour cup on the arm. 

1. Cutting up- This was already mentioned in an earlier post
2. Claying up- In this part of the process the mold is divided into two halves with clay seams. Pour cups are also added to the mold- This offers a place for the foundry to pour the wax.
3. Painting Rubber- Once the pieces are cut, cleaned and clayed up the rubber is painted on both halves of the sculpture.  Four plus coats are used on each piece. It takes about an hour for the rubber to dry in between coats.
4. Mother mold- the mother mold is called that because it is placed on top of the rubber mold and holds the rubber in place.  Without it, when someone tried to pour wax into the mold the mold would be miss shapen.  Creating the mother mold is hard work.  A very stiff plaster/cement is mixed for each half. I mix my plaster by hand.  It takes about 40 minutes for each half of the mother mold.  Everyone of the molds that I made had at least 2 mother molds- front and back. The chest had three because it was so large.

The legs and two parts of the skirt sit drying after the many
coats of rubber. 

After the rubber is dry, Evelyn's head must have a mother
mold of plaster a  This is a two part process
and very, ver messy.  Good weather means
I can make the mess outside.

Once the mold is complete the clay is taken out of the
rubber and the mold is cleaned.  

The other mold and clay mold of the arm cleaned and ready
to be sent to the foundry . 

How do I stay focused while in the studio?

Thought I would share this little tidbit. I stay focused by....

I love audio books.  

Listening to audio books.  I'm pretty much addicted to audio books and have a regular relationship with my library.

My stinky old dog

The pond is a place to go to stretch my bones and
watch nature for a moment.

I also have the company of a very faithful, yet somewhat stinky old dog.  And when I need a break I head outside my door and hang out watching the turtles at my pond.

Now for the next part of the process- Mold making

The sculpture is divided into 8 pieces. 

Once the approval is received, I then begin the next step. Even though I have spent hours painstakingly putting in all of the texture and detail, I must now cut up the sculpture.  In the end there will be molds made of the following.
1. left arm
2. right arm
3. toros
4. head
5. two parts of skirt
6. left leg
7. right leg
8. base

Adding detail and making things as clean as possible
is the result of cutting things apart and being able
to look at all sides without standing on your head. 

The best part of cutting the sculpture apart is that I can work on the detail so much easier.  For example, I work on the detail on the underside of the hands.  This means that all though I have approval I still am spending an entire week on making parts as perfect as possible. While working on the hands, I found some chord and was able to make a better wedding ring, and give Evelyn a manicure.

Pieces of Evelyn are everywhere

The changes that were made

The work station

Here is the larger photograph that was provided that had so much more visual information.  I separated the head from the body more time, so that I could really get close to it. Someone asked me how many times I have done this in the process?  I have no idea, too many times to have kept count.  The reason why I do this is that having a head in my lap is much easier than trying to sculpt while it is attached.  I changed some things on the sculpture like the  eyes, and tweaked the smile I also elongated her neck.

Adding movement to the legs

I also worked hard on the legs. I thought it important to give the sculpture a little more movement.

Client Approval

Clients kick back while taking in Evelyn

I know some artists might not like client input- I LOVE IT!  I really do.

It is at this point when we are pushing the creative process to the very limit.  I love co-create with my client.  

The interesting thing about this creative approval is that the client brought the photograph that you see on the right of this page, but it was a bigger version.   Why would this matter?  Well there was so much more visual information on the larger photograph. Good photographs cannot be overemphasized when trying to create.