About 3200 years ago people began casting
large and small bronze sculptures. After all
those years we are
still casting bronze sculptures in the same manner. I have created
my own twist on this ancient art form. I
worked for a few
years in a bronze
casting foundry.
There I had the opportunity to learn
the different steps of
the lost wax process
and I specialized in
doing patina. This is
the finish that is
applied to the bronze
to give the metal its colors. There I
learned how do the traditional brown
and green patina’s
and even some of the marbles and stone finishes. While
working in the
foundry I had the opportunity to sculpt
and do my own
casting on my own
time, after work and
on the weekends. I
spent many long
hours utilizing that opportunity. It was
in that time that I
came up with an
idea of sculpting a
Bas-Relief, casting
it into bronze, and
then finishing it
with a bright patina finish.
I had from a young
age always had a
thing for sunsets.
When I look back at drawings I had
done in elementary
it was not uncommon
that it was a simply
drawn sun cresting
behind mountains
with some clouds.
So my idea was there
but it took a lot more
to get it to work out.
I started right away
and sculpted a scene
from a picture I had
taken form Orcas
Island. I then started
it through the casting process which in lost
wax casting takes a
month at best. So
when I got to the step
of pouring the 2000 degree molten bronze
into the shell,
something went wrong
and the shell broke. It
was back to the start. I sculpted a new scene
and tried again. It too broke it wasn’t till the
fifth try that I worked
out the kinks and was
able to finally, after months of failed
attempts, get a raw
bronze casting to be
able to try the patina finish on that, to this
point had only been an idea in my imagination. The patina went well. Compared to my
finishes now it was
very simple but it
was a great starting
point to go from.
Its been just over a
year now and I am
still as excited about
this idea as when I
first had it. I feel like
my work is only
getting better, they
are selling better
then I could have imagined and so that
tells me I’m not the
only one who likes
them.
My young family and
I moved back to
Orcas Island where I
had grown up in part because this is where
all my art work was
being based of. I guess growing up in such a beautiful place made
such an impression on
me that I am now able
to share some of that beauty with others
through my art.