PART ONE: THE CHALLENGE

It used to be that the culmination of a sculptor's career was his chance to do full-sized horses in bronze. Since Roman times, every Tsar, Archduke and Admiral has placed himself on a horse on a pedestal. It's a meme, I guess. Just something you have to do when you control the lives of millions. Here are a few examples. There is a great slideshow of similar sculptures here.

The town of Perth, Ontario population 5840, was put on the map of international show jumping when Big Ben and Ian Millar started winning every prize available. Some years after Big Ben's death, Tony and Lynne Hendricks, local business people, organized the resources of the area residents to erect a life-sized bronze of Big Ben. They hired Artcast in Georgetown, Ontario, and Artcast hired me to create this piece.

Although I had heard of this pair, I would not have been able to pick them out of a lineup of any 3 horses. I was amazed when my buddy Bart riffled through a stack of horse images I'd downloaded and picked out a couple of Big Ben. It was my first bit of understanding what the equestrian world might look like. Still, not knowing what I didn't know, I forged ahead, hanging out with horses, sketching, studying, oblivious to the idea that some artists spend a career just studying equine physiolology.

The challenge, as I saw it, was the pose. The townspeople of Perth wanted Big Ben in full flight over a jump. This meant making a tonne of bronze fly. And a 'horse on a stick' was not going to fly.

I carved a quick little model of the pose and layered photos of it on top of a digital image of the jump. It took some weeks of conversations between the customer, the foundry and myself. Here's what the process looked like:

I had planned to support the sculpture on 1" diameter stainless steel rods welded to substantial pipe that represents the jump. Marcus at Artcast has long experience with this kind of engineering, and he gave the design the thumbs up.

A photo was available, one that caught Big Ben and Ian mid-flight over a jump, just what I needed to get a really accurate model for scaling all parts of the project. It's a very mechanical process at this point. Any deviation from the photo was going to be 'not Big Ben'. I was indebited to photographer Shawn Hamilton for supplying this photo. I would have been lost without it.

Finally, I blew up Shawn's photo to full size, about 12 feet long (3.6m) so that I could get started. More in part 2! Whew, a bit tired just remembering. In the heat of the moment, though, on a project with this kind of visibility, there is no fatigue. Fear, excitement, focus, bewilderment, but no fatigue.

I have this long list in my "hall of shame" file, a hazard of custom work. There are many days, though, when the job simply gets done, no fuss, no great challenges. These are pleasant, the bank manager is happy. Challenge gets me out of bed, though, so there's a happy medium, somewhere. Since I'm working towards a 7 1/2 foot tall bronze man project today, I'll describe a happy, easy project.

For some time I've been a supplier to a site called Custom Made. They supply a place for the listing of odd projects of any description. Makers like me get listed as trusted suppliers. We look at job boards and quote on work. The site takes a small percentage to handle some of the trust factor, but the whole transaction happens directly between customer and supplier.

Shawn Broaddus, an interior designer and furniture designer near Atlanta, GA , wanted some custom cabinet pulls made for a credenza that she was building. She wasn't sure just what she wanted. She sent me a photo of a rough version of her project, and I sent back quick images from Rhino 3D:

The job simply flowed along as if we'd done this for years. I sent a few more variations on this design, and it was set. Custom Made has a quoting system that works pretty well. I made the master pattern, got it cast, finished the castings, threaded the backs for holes and supplied brass bolts. Easy. I sent photos to Shawn:

Within the hour I had full payment via Paypal, and shipped these to Atlanta in about two days. Shawn sent back this photo fairly quickly, a happy customer. 

One of the great things about Custom Made is that the customer reviews are public, so prospective customers can see unbiased comments on projects, along with photos, etc. It all helps!

..., and, whew, not all projects are this easy. Hardly a day goes by when I'm not researching some technique or gizmo to help save my bacon. Today I discovered a pretty good looking 3D printer. I've tried to avoid expensive tools, preferring to job out this work, but this is getting tempting. I wasn't that long making the master pattern for Shawn's job, but this would have reduced the work to a few minutes. Hmm, maybe I have a few minutes to spare. Perhaps I love the smell of fresh wood, and don't love the smell of burning ABS?

I have done quite a number of official crests in low relief, all the way from the Canada Crest, to the RCMP, to family coats of arms. I will be given a drawing like this to work from:

I generate one leaf, copy it a number of times, then cut the copies up to fit around the circle. I carve the various elements like the deer and crown and add them to the pattern. The whole thing, perhaps 16" high, is to be cast in bronze. I have to keep metal thicknesses down to around 6mm, or 1/4". Not thicker. Not thinner. The letters are metal elements that I buy and stick on.

I spend lots of time with strong closeup glasses on, getting all the detail I can into the master. The pearls on the crown are cut into my copy mould.

 I have done so many crowns!  For years I saved all the moulds, hoping that one day I could reuse one. I never did. I threw most of them out when I downsized my studio a few years ago. These days, I would just draw one in CAD and get whatever size I needed cut CNC.

 If I had just known where this sort of work was going, perhaps I would have simply fudged some of this detail. When I found the plaque online, it appears to be on a giant sign in the middle of a field.

You see the bronze crest, right? This does seem to be visible only from perhaps 150 metres. Sigh

I love the prairie! Endless skies, the Balm of Gilead poplar, even the razor-edged cold. But my bronze work here, with its great permanence, seems simply lost. Oh well, I guess I know that that delicate deer is playing somewhere in the plains with the antelope.

I often have to work quite small, with geometric shapes. If I'm to do this cheaply, I'll do it by hand, if possible. I worked for decades before CAD and CNC, so this is a trick learned over some time.

This custom hardware was commissioned by a homeowner who was building an elaborate wine cellar. These were his own bronze door latch and hinge elements. I got started in wood and wax, roughing in the details. Then I took carveable plastic moulds and carved them, in the negative. Here's the final casting:

Here is a series of renderings that show the steps taken to get this fine detail that 'pops' off the surface.

I started with the shape of the final object and took a mould off it in plastic (fast-cast polyurethane, fairly carveable):

Then I put a small round cutter in my Dremel and cut little half-round holes into the surface of the plastic to form the grapes:

I press clay into the surface to check my shape, refining as I go. I carved stems and other lines at the same time.  When I was happy, I waxed the surface to release the final plastic copy. I mixed more plastic and poured it into the cavity, and here's what I got:

I'm often done at this point, though I can continue carving into the new surface to refine detail if necessary.

Cool, huh? Thinking negatively is good sometimes...

At the end of a recession, when the bank manager wasn't being all that friendly, a sweet project came along that filled my days and financed some ski trips.

The Prince of Wales Hotel was built over 100 years ago. It has seen good days and bad. When global entrepreneur Si Wan Lai came to Niagara-on-the-Lake, the town changed. The hotel was to go from a near-relic to a rare 5 star hotel, all in less than a year. It was amazing to be part of that change.

Working with Artcast Inc,, we made drawings of one element, a sign featuring lettering and a bas relief logo. The project grew from there to take up most of 5 months of focused work, to include room numbers, room signs, a big sign over the main desk, and a number of pairs of split logos that formed door pulls, inside and out. 

Much of the signage was straightforward bronze plaque making, with that Prince of Wales logo added to most surfaces.

The door pulls, though, were a serious challenge. I had to cast separate custom stand-offs that would allow these to be mounted precisely back-to-back. The mounting had to be fairly invisible, and really strong. These huge doors were solid mahogany and custom bevelled glass.

I spent many days in Niagara with the manager of Artcast, Marcus Knoespel, installing everything. I had taken two long days in my studio practising the door pull mounting, as there was no room for mistakes here.

Artcast did a great job of highlighting the detail on these castings. They were all lost wax cast, so the work was impeccable. Over a decade later, I notice that the front door pull has been scrubbed clean by some enthusiastic employee, destroying that patina. For a night's room and board there, for my wife and me, I'd volunteer to restore that look :)

When we arrived to install the bronze elements, there were around 250 hand-picked craftsmen working inside, feverishly trying to meet deadlines. There were plasterers applying tiny roses to the ceiling. There were painters with tiny brushes adding colour to those details. There were blacksmiths installing iron grills to the doorways of the dining room, while decorators fought to keep sparks and grit off the acres of custom-woven carpet. 

Somehow the flooring got installed rather early, exposing the huge marquetry areas and the carpets to the tramp of many hurried feet, falling tools and the scrape of ladders. I had to install a heavy bronze sign over the reception desk shown above. The granite desk top had been installed, featuring a gorgeous red figure to the stone. It was covered with a tarp, and I did stand on it for some time, struggling to find some mounting place amid the delicate wooden tracery overhead.

It was fun being part of such a to-do, making such over-the-top finery. It's not often you get paid to do your very best work for such an extended period of time.