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My first bronze casting experience had come only a few short years
earlier at the Weston Studio Foundry in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In
1996, Dell Weston allowed me to come into the foundry as a novice
and learn about his world, the complicated and intriguing business
of transforming an artistic vision from its destructible clay form
into an essentially indestructible bronze sculpture. Despite what
many think and more than one collector has said to me since - its
amazing how you can just pour that bronze on there and make it do
that - the truth is that the lost wax technique of casting bronze
is a fascinating and complex endeavor.
I had been introduced to Dell by my friend and kindred spirit, Bruce
Brady, who had first employed the Weston Foundry years earlier.
That same foundry was soon to be my home away from home and it was
there that Bruce, his wife, Peggy, and I had again traveled together
on Bruces last trip to Santa Fe prior to his death. He had
long dreamed of doing a monumental sculpture and now, four years
later, in many ways, he was there with me as our first monument
was executed and cast. It seemed right that his long time foundryman,
Dell Weston, would drive our wagon.
I had discussed the project with Dell before I officially entered
the monument competition. It seemed logical to me that I needed
some idea of the foundry cost for such an adventure before I agreed
to deliver my design for the available budget. It was then that
I told Dell if I did this big piece, I expected him to be with me
for the ride. He consented.
In March, the maquette arrived in Santa Fe by special courier. One
year later the finished monument was to be dedicated. At the time,
twelve months seemed more than adequate to complete the task. We
live and learn.
There are several ways to go about the pointing up process
of enlarging a piece of sculpture. We would use the Lanteri system,
a true pointing up as it were, where a grid system is used to locate
points in space in correct proportion to the smaller model. I had
long realized that Dell is a man of many talents and highly intelligent,
possessing both technical and practical skills. He would use them
all.
Steel rods were welded to an infrastructure and the rods extended
out to the established points. To fill up the deeper hidden spaces
within the eventual massive forms, a Styrofoam spray was used to
build up the structure out to where the various points
indicated the shape. Unlike the smaller design model, the monumental
sized soldiers were built individually, each standing on its own
portion of the eventual base. This allowed for room to work between
the bodies from all angles. At a later time, the clay surfaced men
would be repositioned together to complete the composition, the
mobile bases pushed back together like a puzzle.
Of the total five working weeks I spent away from my medical practice
at the foundry, the first week was during this pointing up phase
of armature construction. I spent another week on body surface refinement
of anatomy and composition, and a week on just hands, heads, and
feet. I spent the third working week on surface texturing after
which the mold making, wax figures, and casting yielded the completed
raw bronze monument. The last trip was spent on surface detail,
gun positioning, plaque completion, and the finish patina. With
each phase came a new set of problems to be solved.
* * *
You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers.
The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of
the revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole
theory of slavery is wrong.
These words of General Howel Cobb of Georgia kept coming to my mind
in October as I worked late into the foundry night, raking the clay,
rubbing the surfaces with my hands, and finding the right and consistent
surface texture for these larger than life slaves who had become
soldiers. I was alone there standing eight feet off the ground,
scoring the contours of the muscular shoulders, looking for a skin
texture consistently different but complimentary to the fabric textures,
and contemplating (through one of those creative zones that artists
live to find) how history had indeed proved General Cobb wrong and
right. You could make soldiers of slaves and they were good soldiers
and slavery was wrong.
Those quiet, private hours with these giant men of African descent
became the most memorable and worthwhile times for me during the
entire journey. In a sense, they ceased being clay creations of
my imagination to become personalities with life stories all their
own. They were representatives of a people, yes, but they had personal
histories like the rest. Who had owned their parents and could they
have been separated from them? It was a personal trauma I was all
too familiar with. Had there been siblings they likely never knew
and what of the motivation to sacrifice personal well being for
a greater cause? I was struck there in my fatigue and excitement
and creative energy that theirs was a sacrifice not based on preserving
a way of life, but creating a new one.
During the daytime hours, the sounds and smells and business of
a working foundry led to an atmosphere of focusing on the technical
aspects of such a work of art. But during those late nights I had
in some way become intimate with these men, that informal warmth
of privacy our natures long for. We engaged in long discussions
as I reshaped clay to find the life in clasped hands or the vision
in the eyes, still seeing the past but looking for the future.
One particular afternoon, as the foundry workers wrapped up another
day, I stood again atop the steel armature working the top of a
kepi. Through the oversized studio garage door opening I felt a
large harnessed dog ease around the corner into the afternoon Santa
Fe light. There on the other end of a leash the dog led a petite
woman with short cropped hair and open wandering eyes seemingly
visualizing what she could not see.
Is anyone there? I heard her ask as she eased into the
studio space.
Up here, I answered as she looked up to the sound and
smiled.
Sharon McConnell has been working for years casting the life masks
of many of the Mississippi Delta blues singers. That afternoon,
she was dropping by to check on one of her own works.
I invited her in and after she explained her task, at her request,
I did the same. She eased over to the sculpture and began to feel
the surfaces, first the massive shoes, then the legs, up the torso,
and finally to one of the dangling hands.
In the quiet of the moment, she whispered, Its beautiful.
The comment meant more than she could have known. For me, the work
had become something more than a statue to be looked at. Sharon
McConnell reminded me that day of what I had known and believed
from the first moment I had a vision for this work. This would be
a sculpture to be explored, to be felt and to be interacted with.
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