Sunday, May 29, 2016

Anything Worth Doing... is Worth Re-Doing

It's been a while since I posted updates on the Virgin Mary commission...
and for good reason.
 This is the picture that I posted on the last day of April.  Shortly after this picture was taken, I found that this preform wasn't going to work.  I was one VERY unhappy fellow at this point.
 The red circle is around what's left of a quarry drill hole that was deeper than I thought.  It had pushed her back forward and left no room for the praying hands in front of her chest.
 I knew that I had a couple loads of stone coming, so I decided to start over rather than bring the project to a halt.  There is a future for this Virgin Mary, but she will have her hands clasped in a lower position.  So...this is on hold until I finish the commissioned work. 
The new stones arrived on May 5. I hit the ground running and have been blocking out this preform to get back to "Square One" (and a little further...).  This stone has PLENTY of room for the figure and I foresee no problems (knock on wood...).  All the basic shapes have been blocked in.
 This "Virgin Mary - Mark Two" is bigger and heavier than the 1st piece.  I'm not comfortable with standing her up.  So, I have to roll her around to get to various sides.
 The base and sub-base are basically blocked in, with only a day's work (or two) to zip that all up.
 The Virgin is standing on a half-round globe.  I made a template from wafer board to help get the form right.
 Lines on the center of the stone and the center of the template gets the form into its correct position.
 I did this on all 4 sides to get the bottom of the globe perfectly round. 

Getting the overall shape of the figure finished will be my next focus - leaving the detailing of the hands and face for last.  I still plan to be finished by the 3rd week of June... but it'll be tight.

 ...and finishing this post with something completely different...
This is a detail of a quartz geode that we found a few miles from the stone quarry near Bloomington.
...and closer to home, this is a close-up into a calcite geode that Meg found in my pea-gravel.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

92,000 lbs. of Stone

This first week of May has been pretty busy... in spite of the heavy rain storms.
 Monday, I installed this sculpture at a private residence in Louisville.  It is entitled "Together" and is carved from North Carolina Granite on an Indiana Limestone pedestal.
This morning, a 60 ton crane showed up from Padgett in New Albany.

  The first thing that we did was to move one of my finished sculptures out of the way.
 Then, two semi's from Stone Belt Trucking showed up fully loaded with quarry blocks.
 The biggest block (Meg's) is 5' high by 4-1/2' thick and over 10' long.  It weighs 36,600 lbs.
 This is my biggest rock from the 2 loads.  It's 8' x 6' x 2' and weighs 15,500 lbs.
 Introducing Blocks A and B.  They're both mine - each weighing in over 10,000 lbs. and 10' x 3' x 2'.
 It's hard to get the scale of these stones until you're walking out beside them.  This is also Meg's and it is 13' long x 4-1/2' x 2' and 19,000 lbs.  There's now enough stone here on the south side of the studio to keep us both busy for a while.
...and I'll end this post with something other than rocks: A Dandelion smiley face that Meg found and photographed in front of the studio.