Impatience with Stone Carving

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Hello again. If you have followed along much on these posts or my art newsletters, you may remember that I tend to work the whole piece of art “at once.” Not literally. What I really mean is that I try not to leave any part too far behind the development of the whole.

In my work on the marble “Gymnast” sculpture, it became time for me to remove some of the base. I know when it is time to remove some of the support when I can no longer envision carving away parts of the figure that I know must be removed because they start to look tiny in comparison to the part next to it. I wanted to shape her hips more, but the stone beneath her was just too overpowering. And also, as I worked the hips, I knew that I would want to start designing the way her hips connect with the shape I want to carve underneath them.


This first image shows the line on the left side of the marble base that I wish to cut off. Note that my wooden support and levelers are location outside of this mark. My first task is to move the supports inside of this line so that the stone will not fall over after I remove some of its bottom.

Since I want to keep the marble block that needs to get cut off, I need to take some extra care when splitting the stone. Normally, I would tip the sculpture on her side so that I could use my diamond blade to cut a “safety stop” into all sides before splitting. However, these days I am working alone without access to another human being when I want one. And if I tried to tip my heavy stone girl over alone, I would either hurt myself or hurt her. Neither is an acceptable option. Safety first.

Instead, I am trying to be patient as I drill deep holes into the stone on the three sides that I can access in order to guide the break once I am ready to make it. Some people think that the mere fact that I carve stone means that I am a patient person. That is a poor assumption. I think that we are all patient in some areas, and hardly at all in others.

My little neck of the woods, Cedar Creek, Texas, recently made the NBC national news for our unusually early drought situation. (The rest of the summer is bound to be another brutal one for our plants!) With the sun and heat we have now here, I have only been working a few hours in the mornings and again in the early evening before dusk on my marble. And not every day. And the drilling is going slowly.

I find myself getting impatient and wanting to just split the stone and hope that it breaks along the line I want. But, the only way that I have successfully convinced myself to settle down and do it right is to remind myself that the marble really will not care. No one (but you, I suppose) would actually know . . . and it would be up to me to redesign my intended sculpture. So, my impatience could cost me a lot of time. And the problem is totally avoidable. Finally, I am terrible company when I am angry with myself.


This second image was taken with my camera’s timer as I used the back end of the axe that I use to chop wood in the wintertime and a metal pipe to hammer the supports further into the stone. I scored the safety lines on the sides and began drilling holes after that. Thank you for following this journey… I wish you patience (when it is called for).

Stone Carving Tools

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

So, here is a brief peek into my little world out in the woods. I am continuing work on my marble “Gymnast.” While I have never been good about names and labels, I will try to use the proper terms for equipment here as I share with you some of my tools.

I bought a pneumatic die grinder with an extension tube at the front, as shown in this first image. Into that I added a double-cut carbide grinding tool connected to a 6-inch shaft. That is about as much reaching as I know how to do, other than to use a Fordham (and I think I broke mine some time ago). But even a Fordham might be of limited use since it has a flexible shaft. I need something rigid that not only will reach the distances I need, but help me push the tool into the marble to carve it. This is especially important since I cannot get even one finger into some of these areas between the figure’s torso and her thighs.


I hope it is obvious from this first image that the main difficulty in carving down into the negative space of the body in a pike position is that the gymnast’s head is in the way! This second image shows you what I really do not even get to see when I am carving (vs. photographing). I am reaching down between the face (upper left) and right arm (bottom of image) and trying to carve a deeper crease between the figure’s legs, just above her knees. It is like hiking in a snowy cave!


This third image shows a right angle die grinder … a Home Depot item with a great warranty. I have traded in two of these babies over the years for a brand new replacement! This stone carving tool also has a double-cut carbide tip with a 6-inch shaft on it. Fantastic helpers, but not many choices in tip shapes unless I am willing to wait and pay for a special order. Patience is rarely one of my virtues!


And even though I cannot always see what I am carving, I still like to draw on the stone to help me delineate various anatomical forms. Something to aim for! A straight pencil with a tapered tip will simply not leave a mark on the stone inside this narrow crevice. In this last image, you may see my thumb up against the figure’s eye as I am holding a specialized scissors that hold a pencil between its front claws. These teeth in the scissors are not designed to hold something as thick as a pencil, but it was all I could think to use. So, I bend the pencil in an angle that I think I want and squeeze the scissor handles very tightly so that I do not lose my pencil when I move down into my “well” of a workspace.

Really, I hope that I can pull this off! What are your favorite tools – for stone carving or any task?

Happy birthday, John! And thank you for showing me a lot about tools.

Lost Wax Bronze Casting

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I recently got the opportunity to cast bronze in Austin, Texas, at the Atelier 3-d with artist and teacher Steve Dubov. Always interested in process, Steve uses a different kind of investment mold and alters his technique for the lost wax bronze casting method.

So, I created a couple of new sculptures in wax. In my art post on April 15, you saw an image of me creating the sprue, the wax sculpture connected to a wax funnel that will all ultimately become bronze.

While I need my wax welds to be strong, these things are a bit fragile and oddly shaped, each sprue being individual. My bumpity dirt driveway that is almost a mile long helps nothing. So, I have transported the wax floating in a bucket of water. This greatly diminished the vibration and shock on the piece, although I still had water sloshing around in my car. Sheesh, I must continue to fill the driveway potholes with stone chips!





In this third image, air conditioning metal tubing has been used to create a “mother mold” (the outer supporting mold). I am holding my sprue to keep it from floating, pour funnel at the top opening with the sculptures deeper, parallel to the side walls. Steve is pouring a mixture of plaster, playground sand, and water into the mother mold. Once this mold has set, holes will be lightly punched into just the metal tubing to release steam later during the pouring of the molten bronze.


After the mold is ready, it will be heated and all of the wax will be melted out. Now the sculpture is then only an air space. Bronze will be heated to about 2000 degrees F so that it becomes a liquid. Then it will be poured into the funnel-shaped opening, travel down the air space, follow the sprue space to fill the sculpture space, and then chase air out the vents. The bronze begins cooling as soon as it is poured, so everything in the pour moves fairly quickly.

I did not attend the bronze pour since I was working in my studio on my stone carving. This fourth image shows you the bronze pieces after Steve cut away the mold and then cut apart each sculpture from the cooled bronze sprue parts. He left some of the sprue on so that I could put the art into a vice as I chase the metal.


“Chasing” means cleaning up all of the metal sculpture so that it looks as I intended. This often means grinding off all sprues and vents and re-sculpting those connection points as desired. On larger artworks, “chasing” also includes welding all parts of the sculpture together, and then grinding out all evidence of the weld in the visible areas of the sculpture.

In this last image, you may see that the investment mold cracked and allowed bronze to leak out beyond the sculpture and into the crack. It is too bad that I did not plan ahead for this… this bronze has a cool pattern. It is a bit nautical, like a merman’s fins, eh? I also like this photo because of the way the light is bouncing off of the various facets that I carved into the original wax sculpture. One of the things I enjoy about bronze is the ability to create a texture that is quite different from what I can create in stone.


This is likely to take me days to clean up to my satisfaction and later add a patina to my new sculpture. So, stay tuned . . .

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Please join me on Sunday in Austin, Texas, for the release party for Origin Magazine. Origin features articles about quality living, such as yoga and fine art.


Whole Foods Rooftop Downtown Austin,
5th and Lamar
Sunday May 1st, 2 - 6 p.m.

Art, Music, circus, One of the largest Free Yoga Classes ever held in Austin led by National Teacher Christina Sell at 4 p.m. Costumes welcomed, Performers, Artists, Sponsors, Vendors, Connection, Celebrating 152 pages of Art+Community. We are debuting the same issue in 6 cities within 3 weeks. WOW! Djembabes play at 5:30pm.

This issue features 60+ artists, 90+ yogis and 152 pages of art, philanthropy, beautiful photography, conscious articles and a lotta love. It’s all free!
For more information, contact Maranda Pleasant at: Editor@originmagazine.com.

Stone Carving Problems

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Continuing my last post about stone carving the angel, my next step was to start creating the form of the figure. On bodies, I long ago discovered that I need to start with the hips and legs and then work the other parts of the body to fit those. Not everyone works in the same way. One of the perks about creating art is that you discover how YOUR brain works. You learn so much about your unique way of experiencing and discovering the world around you, how you take information in and how you express yourself.

Thus, I began to shape the pelvic butterfly a little and then the upper thighs of the angel. Only to find more problems in the stone when I found cut into some of that orange crumbly layer that will probably cause me more grief than elation on this piece. You may see this orange inclusion in the figure’s right thigh.



I had designed the legs to be of slightly different positions for more interesting shapes. Now, the only choice I had was to move that back thigh lower, below the problem area in the stone. That, of course, would affect all of the other relationships, especially the length of the lower part of the leg. However, I realized that since my angel was no longer a bas-relief, but instead 3-d, I could make up this shortening by angling that leg in a different way. This meant that I will need to change the position of the heel of the foot, but I think that I have enough stone to be able to do that.

More as the stone carving develops . . .

And for those who celebrate Easter, here are links to some of my previous postings about Pasqua in Florence, Italy:

• The blessing of the stone relic originating from the Crusades
  
• Then in Piazza della Republicca ... follow the relic, see it joined with the cart, flagwavers, and then a small parade to the Duomo for the show and explosion ... and the DOVE ! The Explosion of the Cart
  

Stone Carving Angel Art

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I wanted to show you the progress I made since my last blog post about my stone carving of an angel. This art project in a pink limestone (from central Texas) was for the Old World Stone Carving Competition at The Vineyard at Florence in central Texas.

I had started off thinking that my angel carving would be in bas-relief. Bas-relief is not simply flattened shapes cut out like a puzzle. Instead, it is compressed FORM. In these first two images, you may see that I cut away the stone around a compressed angel figure. In the second image, the stone is reclining on her back on the table, while I am standing at the top and have drawn in the shape of the compressed skull of the angel. Notice the narrowness towards the face while the back of the skull remains wider.



I do not normally work in limestone and have never worked with the pink. While carver extraordinare Bob Ragan told me that it is possible to get pink limestone without the random crude I was seeing in my piece, I am still stuck with this stone’s genetics. And so, in the first image.you may see that even though I had cut a safety score along a straight edge that I wanted, when I chipped away at the limestone, a huge chunk broke away, stopping along a line of orange inclusions in the rock.

Typically when I see problems like this, I cut them out and redesign. I am a direct carver, so I draw what I want to do on the stone and then carve parts away that are not in the design. At some point, I began to finish the stair concept in my head and also realized that since I wanted to carve a piece that will have something all round, the bas-relief idea would make the angel look weird from side viewpoints. As it often turns out, the solution to one problem also is the solution for another.

I had hoped to cut another layer into the stone that was deep enough to create an angel in the round while also removing most of the defects in the stone. I was getting tired and also, the competition day was nearing an end. Since I was staying at the mayor’s home, I needed to stop carving so that I could follow her there. So, I stopped that first day by making score marks and safety cuts (to protect the angel, stairs, and sun disc) and left the removal of the stone for the next morning.


Day 2: I removed the stone and cleaned up the edges a bit, carved the stairs in roughly. This allows me to move the piece along as a whole. I find that often there are subtle changes in the design based on the rock’s personality, but also as my mind sees how things are working together, or not.


In this final image, you may see that the soft orange “seam” appears again, this time between the angel figure and the sun shape behind her. This naturally will affect the positioning of the angel and also how I carve. Limestone is very soft and also, a carver normally works three sides, leaving the fourth as “insurance” in case something breaks and all needs to be pushed back. It is very challenging to try to create a form, without too many undercuts (up to some point in the creation) in case you encounter a surprise and need to carve around this. That is probably why stone is my drug of choice – challenging and intelligent collaboration.

PS. I could still use your daily vote to help me win $2500 to pay for a bronze casting foundry bill… go here (http://kellyborsheim.see.me/aw2011) and click on the star of your choice in the upper right (left start is a low 1 while the rightmost star is a high 5 score). Voting continues through April 20. Thank you so much!

Stone Carving Competition

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Wow – is time just whipping right on by! I have been busy wax sculpting, mold making, chasing and then spruing wax and finally last night, after taking my wax sprue with two new sculptures to the Atelier 3-D, made the investment mold of the whole contraption. The bronze pour happens later this month. Whew! What a week! Here is a self-portrait I took from my kitchen’s window sill while I was welding my wax sculptures to the sprue lines.



So, to follow-up. Here are a few images of the 2-day Old World Stone Carving Competition at The Vineyard at Florence (Texas). I will write more in the next post about my piece, jokingly titled “Stairway to Heaven” for now. There are more images on my Facebook page and I think the settings allow you to view them even if you are not technically my friend (and why are you not? - :0)

Morning Light at the Vineyard

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

When I first arrived at the Vineyard at Florence (Texas) to hang my solo exhibit there, there was much talk about a pastel drawing that I had just finished the night before. Apparently, just the week before, a couple had gotten engaged on the very spot that was the subject of my artwork! Well, I had been seeking the light …

Shown here is “Morning Light at the Vineyard” from the grounds of The Vineyard at Florence, Texas. This is the backyard of the “Villa Firenze” where my art hangs and you may taste some delicious wines (their award-winning Forte is my favorite). The vineyards themselves are off to the right of this viewpoint.

I used a handmade Italian paper that I brought back to Texas with me. The lightest part of the image is the pure paper. Are the shadows not wonderful! I have sold a couple of giclée fine art reproduction from this image, but will soon have the original back on exhibit at the Villa Firenze.

Come on out this weekend for their spring arts fair and the “Old World Stone Carving Competition.” There will be about a dozen stone carvers working for your dusty pleasure and I will be creating on an angel in pink limestone.

The Vineyard
8711 FM 487
Florence, Texas 76527
Contact: KAMBRAH GARLAND at 512-924-7447 or ph. 254.793.3363
www.thevineyardatflorence.com E-mail: stonecarvingevent@gmail.com
The competition will be judged on Sunday afternoon at 2 pm by no less than 3 independent judges. Prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places will be given.

Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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And a follow-up on the Greenhouse Gallery’s Salon International 2011 (oil painting competition). I was so excited walking into the gallery with over 400 paintings hung floor to ceiling (what is called “Salon Style” hanging) – two women showed me where my painting was and there was a big white ribbon on it! Whoot! I must admit to a childlike delight (literally jumping in the air) and an overall giddiness throughout the reception … and weekend. The award was the judge’s Honorable Mention. And the painting is “Buskers in Firenze” and depicts my street performing colleagues Mimito and Francis that I met while I was streetpainting in Florence, Italy.

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And I recently received notice that voting for the People’s Choice Award goes on through the 20th of April. I could really use your support in this and I understand that one computer may vote every 24 hours. I hope that you will visit the page below and choose the star rating of your choice by clicking on it. (left start is low score of one while the far right star is a high five).
http://Kellyborsheim.see.me/aw2011

Thank you so much for your interest and support!