Sculpture: Dancer

s(December 2004)
It's been a while since I posted a sculpture.

This sculpture was started because I was board of sculpting guys. Through a unfortunate sequence of timing whenever I was in a position to sculpt from the model, the model was a guy, and I was getting tired of it. So I thought I'd try something different.

Around the sculpture studio there are a lot of pieces done by the day students. A lot of them are very good. And they get to do things that we don't get to do in the evening class. One of those things is carving. And I thought I'd like to give it a try.

To make things easier, then say carving stone, they make a box out of a special mix of materials. This makes for something that is easy to carve, but has the appearance of stone when finished. To make the blocks, they use a 2 liter juice container as a mold, mix together plaster, Densite and vermiculite. Vermiculite is a very soft stone material. The form they use for making the carving block is a lot like very small packing peanuts. It's also very light. The Densite and plaster are used to hold it all together. Densite is very similar to plaster it just cures harder. By mixing the three, about 2-1-1, you get about the right hardness for carving.

So after making two of these blocks, I needed something to carve. While it could be the model, the teacher didn't want to make a big deal out of me doing something different, so he suggested I make a maquette, to work from. Since I was doing Salsa dancing at that time, I decided to do a little dancer in the final position of a spin. I also decided to do a Japanese super deformed kind of look. Big head small body, simple forms.

The maquette above is quite small. The lead bars are to hold t up because it wasn't very stable, and it wasn't very well built. I think I slapped it together in less then an hour.

The next step was to start carving the block. This was a very interesting process. Very hard to get started. It's a tricky feeling, you know if you go too far you can't go back. But if you don't cut into the box, you'll never get anything out of it.

The block was interesting to cut. I use an old steak knife for most of my sculpting. It's a simple tool that works very well for me. This knife cut nicely into the box, so at at least that part of it was comfortable.

It's also tricky visualizing where things are within the box so you know where to cut. One of the suggestions the teacher had was draw each side of the sculpture on the sides of the box. Work your way around the block gradually cutting this pattern deeper and deeper. Another method is to cut to the deepest points, then work your way back out from those points. A combination of the two is probably the best.

Unfortunately something shiny must have crossed my path, because I never finished the carving. I do still have it, and I might finish it one day.

However I did go back to the maquette. Seeing as I didn't finish the carving I decided to cast the maquette so I'd at least have a reference if I went back to the casting.

So I spent a class cleaning up the maquette, and a few classes making the mold. I then prepared and cast it in Densite. This took me to the spring of 2005. The class work on this peice spanned the gaps in working on another piece.

Over the summer I worked on sanding it. I spent a week at a cottage with a bunch of friends from work. I spent a good amount of my time there working on this sculpture and another one. Finally when classes started up again in the fall I took the sculpture back to class and added colour to it. So from start to finish it took about a year to complete.

I am very happy with this piece. But it has a lot of mix emotions for me. It was originally intended to be a gift for someone that is no longer part of my life. When I said above that I stopped the carving because something shiny crossed my path, that wasn't the truth. I will always cherish this peace as a reminder of the good times we had together. I may never finish the carving. It's unfinished form is rather symbolic too.