THIS IS IT, Master...

Here IT IS!

[Double click the photos to enlarge them.]

The bell holding the poetry of James Broughton about which I've been posting the last month has been cast & carefully finished out into its new metal state! There is always a huge relief to see the work of many many hours secured in a safely solid, more durable material than the wax which relative softness allows me to carve.

I wrote earlier this year about this stage of raw casting.

While this photograph is a bit brutal in showing the less than ideal surface...

The casting is basically sound & looks quite legible after I began working the surface. Here in mid-process I used ink to darken the background as a test to help see which details needed strengthening

I vulcanized the silicon molds around the masters, [about which process you may read more here] of the THIS IS IT Bell, the FROG RING & the MEDIUM LILY HOOP EARRING before making photographs of the finished masters. I cut those molds this evening & look forward to seeing how the first production waxes look when I begin injecting them tomorrow.

Meanwhile here is the FROG perching on the edge of new life in metal...

THE MASTERS CAST...

This draft got waylaid by work on my article Sculpture Is Drawing In Space that was published last month by the American Bell Association's magazine THE BELL TOWER. It is based on my post of February 13 of the same name.

This stage of the production has not been photographed much before & it is still timely. I've been trying to share studio processes more intimately this design year. I'm pleased to have rediscovered it.

I am taking some deep lessons for myself inside this season of translation... the waxes I've spent weeks have been lost... lost into the process of casting them as metal masters.

A plaster waste mold is poured around the finished wax carving & is paced into a kiln. From inside my original carved wax flows molten... leaving its impression which thus can receive molten silver in turn... transforming & quite accurately translating my wax work into durable metallic form... if all has gone right. There is possibility for metal being too cool, for instance, making for an incomplete casting. Or too much heat can result in a poor surface. All went well this time... WHEW!!!

I now get to analyse & amplify my carving further in this more dense material. The wax, while being the hardest I can find, is much softer than silver. Now more than ever I can tend to sharpening details... inside & out... I can develop the surface to a tighter polish.

Translation is always somewhat rough. The solidification of any dream becomes inevitably more crude at higher resolution. This shift determines the outer limits of available material. Unlike the wax, I cannot add to the form. I can only work inward from here. Growth becomes that beautiful negative so equally requisite...

Here you can see into the pores of a raw cast surface. There have been wild dialogues between my carved surfaces & hardening plaster... between that plaster surface & the flow of molten metal into its cavity... which shrinks while cooling, taking on such a deep complexion...

In these shots I've begun to use silicon brushes to start developing the surface...

The new version of The GINGKO Bell & a design inspired by the Hawai'ian vine we know as Split Leaf Philodendron, The MONSTERA Bell are also ready for the reworking of all those surfaces toward new degrees of perfection...