I ran my crowdfunding campaign (to help with foundry costs to cast my sculpture in bronze) with nothing but preliminary drawings, maquettes and digital visualisations of the piece in situ. Bearing in mind that in the past my art has emerged from a series of often unexpected revisions it was comparatively new ground for me to envisage and share so early on what the finished work would look like.
The studies I produced explored a variety of ideas but it was not too long before a particular idea started to dominate. Further studies and maquettes followed and it was at this stage that the essential character of the bronze I wished to create became clear.
I’m pleased to say that last Friday I successfully transported the completed sculpture from studio to foundry. This journey was helped by a number of party balloons used in order to gently support the upper sections over the numerous potholes and speed bumps that exist between Reading and West Molesey. I don’t know whether it was the festive season which helped me come up with this solution but the foundry seemed quite impressed with the idea.
The photos below show the exterior of the foundry and a close-up of the finished sculpture.
Now it is over to the expert hands of Milwyn Fine Art Casting to create a silcone mould from this sculpture which will then be cut-free and used to create a replica in wax. This will happen in the next 5-6 weeks.
I will be returning to approve the wax and will look forward to sharing more photos of that stage, a process which I last engaged with during my Fine Art degree at Sunderland Polytechnic so many moons ago.
In my next post I am going to return to my experience of crowdfunding this time around and share some further advice which might help others considering going down the same route.
