Pietrasanta Bronze Casting Residency 2010

Preparing ceramic shells for a bronze pour

On Saturday morning when I was loitering in the yard looking at lots of bronzes that had just been sand blasted, one of the foundry guys beckoned me over to asked me if I wanted to see them loading the ceramic shells into the kiln. “Si Grazie…”

They have a large trolley on rails that was loaded with about 4 large shells and lots of smaller ones packed around them. I was surprised that the large shells were the right way up, as I’d assumed they would be fired upside down to let the wax out. However, they explained that they had made holes in the ceramic shell to let the wax out. The smaller ones were all upside down.

They then raised vertically the large door of the kiln and I felt a blast of heat from the inside of the kiln which was already at around 650°C. The trolley was moved into the kiln and the big door came back down with a large metal drain pipe poking out stil. Within a couple of minutes the wax started pouring out of this and was caught in a very large saucepan which had to be emptied regularly.

They explained that the kiln would be kept at 650 till all the wax had melted, then it would be taken up to 900 for about 6 hours to fire the ceramic shells and then cooled slowly over the weekend. I should come back on monday morning and they would show me the rest of the process.

So about 8 am on Monday I returned, this time with camera in tow to watch the next stages. They were going to cast a large piece of the fountain they are currently working on. As it was so large they wouldn’t be doing anything else with it. First of Enzo was having to fill each of the holes that had been made to let the wax escape – this was done with a dab of ceramic liquid and a little chuck of ceramic powder – followed by a quick flame throw to ‘fire’ it. For the large fountain – this took around 1 1/2 hours!

Meanwhile, Maurizio was getting the bronze weighed out and ready for the furnace, as well as the large container that the shell will sit in. This is lowered into a hole in the ground to make the pour easier. They waited until Enzo had nearly finished patching all the holes in the shell before lighting the furnace – they wouldn’t want to have to keep the bronze at full melt temperature for any length of time. The furnace was loaded up with off cuts of bronze from previous cast’s runners and risers, and eventually some ingots too.

When the shell was finally patched, it was hoisted up, and lowered carefully into the large container, which had disks of felt positioned under where the steel legs of the framework came. These legs also had rectangular pieces of rubber attached to them.

The container was then filled with sand from 2 large drums. I was then hoist out of the hole, and had a machine attached to it to vibrate it so that all the sand was well compacted.

The container was returned to its hole in the ground, and the top was sealed with a sheet of plastic before the vacuum pump was attached to put the whole container under negative pressure. More sand was then placed over the sheet, presumably to protect it from melting/burning from bronze splashes.

The shell was finally ready for the pour. All that was needed was for the bronze to get to the right temperature and for all the required people to arrive.

Donna Scultura (Women Sculpture)

This morning I went to the opening of the women’s scultpture show – an annual show they have of 4 prominent female sculptors working in Pietrasanta now in its 8th year – which they always schedule to open on Valentines day!

It started at 10.30 am – with a series of talks in the lecture hall off the cloister (this was also used last sunday for the Knut Steen award ceremony which I haven’t had a chance to blog about yet).

As I arrived I met Shelley Robzen (http://www.shelleyrobzen.com/) who I had lunch with on my first day here and who I’m trying to meet up with again, and Immanuel Klein (http://www.immanuelklein.com/) who was here on the marble carving residency before christmas but is back here for a while longer. We sat in the second row and ended up beside Hakon Anton.

My italian is getting better as I could get the general jist of all they were say (it was all in italian) – although I wasn’t always sure who people were.

The artist were:

Elena Biancini

Who does interesting figures in fired clay, and a piece I particularly liked of an egg hanging in the centre of a pyramid (appesa a un filo). She didn’t want to say anything, and I can’t find her online either.

Editt Davidovici

Of Romanian origin, she showed a slideshow of personal photos starting from childhood, including amazing snow sculpture in Canada and ending with a poignant photo of her son who recently died in a flying accident whilst training to be a pilot.

She works in marble and I thought her most powerful piece was called ‘fallen angel’ and was dedicated to her son. It was like a wing and head of a bird or gull with an amazing line and curve – and had a tear of polished marble about where the birds eye would be. However, I did think that the tear spoilt it slightly – it was just a bit too cliched and unsubtle in a very subtle piece. I wonder if she could have kept it but tonned it down a bit, or maybe it wasn’t necessary.

Jaya Schuerch

http://www.jayaschuerch.com/

She spoke of the amazing experience she has when she first arrived in Pietrasanta in the 80s and learned in various marble studios from old craftsmen who had been carving since the age of 14… Sadly a lot of these studios are closing down or moving out of town, as their son’s don’t want to face such a hard life and the price of real estate in central pietrasanta rockets.

After having moved studios a number of times, her need to have a stable and ‘bello’ place to work, drove her to set up a studio where artist and artigiani can work: Studio Pescarella http://www.studiopescarella.com/

(This is just outside Pietrasanta and I’m hoping to go visit it soon)

Later in the actual exhibition I talked to Jaya – which was very interesting. Amongst other things, she encouraged me to invest in hiring a professional photographer to take shots of my works – if you can’t send the work, its great to send good photos, and its very important to have good quality catalogues…

I’d told here that I had only been here 2 weeks and how my head was a bit really from trying to take it all in, (I feel like a sponge). She said that I’d probably start crying a lot in another couple of weeks – most people do – or rather the women tend to cry a lot and the men take to drinking too much!

Virginia Tentindo

(I couldn’t find a site of her work but this give a good overview) http://gumucio.blogspot.com/2009/11/el-erotismo-de-virginia.html

Of argentinian italian origin, her work seem very influenced by past latin american civilasations – with strange hybrid creatures and weird erotic scenes. (The little boy next to us exclaimed ‘bruto’ and ‘monstro’ – its ugly, a monster!) . She has a studio in the Bateaux Lavoir in Monmartre in Paris (where Picasso worked)

She showed a film of her work and studio with a voice over text by Julio Cortazar (Argentinian novelist). Unfortunately they didn’t have the sound connected up to the PA system, but as I was only a few seats from the laptop I managed to catch some of it.

Igor Mitoraj appeared at the exhibition to see Virginia.

After the talks, we all gathered on the steps of the church (Chiesa di S. Agostino) and the doors were opened dramatically – such different traditions to the UK.

La Fusione

Here are some shots of a bronze ‘pour’ – or as they say here (far more exciting) ‘La Fusione’.

I took these shots earlier today. They were doing 2 large pieces that were buried in sand, and then a lot of small pieces, that were taken out of the kiln just as the bronze was taken out of the furnace.

They had told me in the wax room to come down to watch this pour, as it was a very beautiful one – when the bronze goes in the small ceramics, you can often see it coming out of the holes.

“Gli Artegiani” at work

I have also been learning lots of techniques from the foundry guys – some hard to explain, but highlights are:

– use of heated sand-paper dipped in ‘petrolio’ to smooth the wax

– how to use heated rasps on the wax

– making wax plates / boards on marble slabs – 4 batons of wood measure out the space, then the slab and batons are oiled and the molten wax poured at a steady pace into the space

– soldering wax together (very similar to metal techniques) – using a hot tool and a bit of wax shaped into a rod

– how to use small pins to strengthen small soldered joins (heat and insert cut end of pin first, then use pin end to insert into the other half of join)

– moving over the large extractor fan when making lots of smoke (large soldering and using large heated tools)

– how to pour the molten brown wax into cool water, then with oil on your hands kneed into a ball of very maleable wax – they do this with the hard brown wax to build up barrier walls on moulds. It can almost be used like clay

– using a wonderful old metal syringe to inject molten wax into a small mould (although I haven’t been alowed to wield the syringe that I’m coveting!)

and probably many others that are already becoming second nature!

The Wax

So, in my first week at the foundry I have been experimenting with working directly in wax. I’d discussed this with Helaine Blumenfeld over christmas, and we agreed this would be a good way to settle in to the foundry at the start of the process, that wax might be an interesting medium for me, and with the aim in the next week or so to create something that I could then take through the whole lost wax process.

I had developed some ideas I wanted to experiment with. These were related to recent reading I’ve been doing – Collapse by Jared Diamond (a fascinating account about why certain civilizations failed and some were able to survive – when faced with changes in climate and overexploitation of their environment) and Six Degrees by Mark Lynas (a graphic account of what we think will happen with each degree of global temparature rise).

So my ideas are around man’s interaction with our environment: erosion, deforestation and climate change. I think other ideas influenced by the recent Haiti earthquake – plate tectonics, volcanoes and earthquakes, seem also appropriate given the nature of wax and bronze casting.

I have included some images of my first wax experiments.

At times it has been exciting and rewarding, at others a bit frustrating. Back in england I had been playing with ideas of erosion using plaster, which really lends itself to this. Wax is different, and can have a slight tendency to look plastic when I melt and drip it. But I’ve discovered a point when cooling from melted that I really like using. And i’ve starting finding some ways of working the wax to create forms and textures that are begining to work.

In parallel to the wax texture experiments, I have also been casting some small tetrahedron men in black modelling wax, and starting to put them together. I thought it was going to be too small to cast in bronze, but the foundry have said we can try.

Helaine came to the foundry this morning to see my first week’s work, and especially liked the 3 experiments I’ve included in the images here. Her feedback was really interesting and useful (this was on top of a great chat I had with her yesterday afternoon at her studio).

One of my experiments was a large relief map of Italy that I had done – I felt I was referring to the renaissance tradition of the bronze baptistry doors in Florence, and to the influence of italy and being here on me. However, I wasn’t sure where I had gone with it – it became very decorative, and I think I had got too attached to this. I then wanted to try to work into it a man’s presence, but it didn’t seem possible.

Helaine responded by remembering what Knut Steen had said to her when she was starting off (and had lots of energy and ideas):

“Its a great idea, but its not a sculpture”

I am really excited and energised by the process of this residency. It is very hard and probably not necessary here to capture what I have started to learn from my 2 chats with Helaine. However, I feel on the verge of a breakthrough, that I am beginning to see things differently.

One of the things I’m begining to see differently are my ideas – I think I’m being too literal with how I put them into practice, that I’m too tied to them.

Often I have big ambitious ideas – that I start to form, then there is so much work going into creating this initial vision that this absorbes me totally and I haven’t left room to requestion it, letting it change, be spontaneous and develop. My humanosphere has been an example of this, but perhaps this has also been a result of my change in work process since motherhood. In a lot of ways it has improved, I feel I’ve been procrastating less, getting on and pushing through with work, but I think I may have lost a bit of the re-questioning and looking that is so important.

Helaine picked up a pair of my figures and placed them on my small island – it looked amazing, and we both smiled. In some ways this was what I was intending with these different experiments, but somehow I hadn’t thought to bring them together yet!

With this small action she has set me off in a new exciting direction of experimentation…