It's the later 90s, I'm working pretty steadily, with and without assistants, making foundry tooling, industrial stuff and the occasional more artistic thing, a reasonably steady flow of smallish work.
I had a customer of long standing, Trystan, who had started doing trade shows in the US. Trystan makes 'site furniture', or outdoor amenities like benches, tree grates and fountains. I had done all their masters and tooling for cast iron and aluminum since they got started in the early 80s. They sent a thumbnail of a hare jumping over a tortoise, wondering what it would cost to get this done about 9' long in cast iron.
It has always been my practice to try to add value to customers' ideas. I figure that if I give away some expertise off the top that I will show that I have the chops, and that I'm happy to collaborate. I wrote this back as an aluminum casting, cutting the cost substantially, adding other ideas to make it fly. The rabbit was going to be mounted on a pole, and I was really nervous about the idea of kids jumping up and down on that long fulcrum.
I did get the job. It was pretty exciting. Up here in the Frozen North, New York seems like a big deal. They were trusting me to do this sort of grand, sort of cartoonish project. The landscape architect for the NYC parks system sent a clay maquette, perhaps 17" wide for me to work from.
I had a customer of long standing, Trystan, who had started doing trade shows in the US. Trystan makes 'site furniture', or outdoor amenities like benches, tree grates and fountains. I had done all their masters and tooling for cast iron and aluminum since they got started in the early 80s. They sent a thumbnail of a hare jumping over a tortoise, wondering what it would cost to get this done about 9' long in cast iron.
It has always been my practice to try to add value to customers' ideas. I figure that if I give away some expertise off the top that I will show that I have the chops, and that I'm happy to collaborate. I wrote this back as an aluminum casting, cutting the cost substantially, adding other ideas to make it fly. The rabbit was going to be mounted on a pole, and I was really nervous about the idea of kids jumping up and down on that long fulcrum.
I did get the job. It was pretty exciting. Up here in the Frozen North, New York seems like a big deal. They were trusting me to do this sort of grand, sort of cartoonish project. The landscape architect for the NYC parks system sent a clay maquette, perhaps 17" wide for me to work from.
I have no idea how I quoted this job. I guess I just figured out surface area and threw some guesses into a hat. I planned to build this directly in epoxy clay, cutting it up for foundry patterns. It seemed like a brilliant idea, at the time.
I hired an assistant. We spent untold hours building the original in styrofoam, shaping as close as possible to the final surface. I added plaster on top, making the surface smooth and even more detailed. I waxed the surface and started laying epoxy clay on top, gauged by eye to be roughly .3" (8mm) thick.
I hired an assistant. We spent untold hours building the original in styrofoam, shaping as close as possible to the final surface. I added plaster on top, making the surface smooth and even more detailed. I waxed the surface and started laying epoxy clay on top, gauged by eye to be roughly .3" (8mm) thick.
Here I have established some templates, plywood outlines that define cross sections. I am filling in with styrofoam. I kept two glue guns going. A variety of nail guns and those hot glue guns help to keep the building process moving quickly. The shaping of the bulk of a piece often goes really quickly.
This is the time when I feel most competent, mainly because I can start with nothing and build this turtle shell until it looks not bad in a matter of hours. I might swagger a little on the way home.
When I am building foundry patterns directly, I have to create a hard, durable shell approximately the thickness of the bronze casting, something like 6 to 8mm. This means getting the surface underneath pretty accurate. And trying to get customer approvals on the shape before adding final detail. I would push really hard to get this approval, and fail, every time.
Don't try this at home: endless mixing of epoxy and micro beads to get clay that sets pretty quickly, forcing me to work really quickly, especially if it's hot. Then there is a lot of sanding to improve the shape and get those foundry patterns to work in the foundry. I suspect that at this point I've already spent the money designated for labour.
Just the rabbit head detail required, another couple of pails of epoxy clay to make. Oh, and the legs, more pails of goo needed...I could lift the rabbit off and work on it at a better height.
I have skipped over another 150 hours of messing with plastics to make the parts of the piece fit into the foundry. It's best glossed over. Jeepers, I could have been learning the violin or studying law...
Here we are, grinding the castings that have been welded together. Lots more shaping with the 4 1/2" angle grinder. This is not fine sculpture. But it's Aesop for New York. At the time, I still felt excited and, well, important, perhaps.
This piece, named "Aesop's Bench" is on Broadway at Van Courtlandt Park in New York, right across from a shop that sells only carrot cake.
Somebody had posted the location of the sculpture on Google Maps. I did visit this location in the summer of 2001, a few weeks before the world changed. I guess my life changed a bit when this project came my way. The designer was happy with our work. He asked, at some point, "how high is the ceiling in your studio?", and for the next decade or so I did a number of 10' (3m) high Park Features for the NYC Parks Dept. The elation over working for the city lasted for a while. Still, my hands would ache when I got the subsequent calls for more stuff. The challenges just got bigger, and I didn't get smarter quite as fast as I'd have liked.
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