I continued working on Meg's Reading Girl commission for Charles City, Iowa. I used the diamond bladed chainsaw to remove big corners from the block. It originally weighed in around 28,000 lbs., but the preform (on the rail cart in this picture) only weighs about 6,000 lb.
The advantage to using the chainsaw is that the scrap is all carvable material - all the corners will eventually become other sculptures. In fact, this piece had hardly hit the ground before Meg drew a design on it.
Last week's effort focused on putting a rubber mold onto Meg's plasticine scale model. Then, I put a plaster mother mold over the rubber, de-molded the clay and cast a plaster from the mold.
This photo shows the plaster model which is 1/4 scale to what the stone piece will become. You can see that I've drawn a square around the base of the piece. This gives me the reference lines from which to take measurements; I can take measurements in all 3 dimensions. You can see the measurement devices that I use. I also use calipers to double check everything. It's a slow and tedious process, but very accurate.
This is the progress by the end of the week.
This is the view from the other direction.
Meg took this photo while she was in Colorado last week. She had to go to the foundry in Loveland to make final arrangements for her bronze sculptures that were commissioned by the Home of the Innocents. You can't blame her for choosing to do business in a place like this...(unless we could find an art foundry in Hawaii?)
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