Visiting Old Friends at the Car Park 8.20.2011

After a bit of rest from the late night train ride from Beijing back to Changchun, last years group of artists had an appointment with Mr. Fan Tao to visit the Car Park. I would have a chance to see the stone piece and more importantly the cast bronze "Auto pod" and see if it had been displayed correctly.
Close, but, not quite. What did I expect, the foundry workers really messed it up, it is a bit backward and the little cars are facing to the back and it should be on a stone base. However they did a great job on the patina (surface color), outstanding!!!

Stone Work: Process

The first step is to cut the foot of the sculpture flat making it the base, so the stone is upside down. Next, we lop off small sections because I needed to see how the stone was going to split, stones fracture differently. Once the foot was cut the crane was called in and the stones were rolled up right. (see video) I chiseled some lines that later would guide my saw work. I made lots of measurements where I wanted the holes drilled and the splitting pins driven to break off larger sections before we start moving toward the final surface with the 7 inch diamond saws . The holes would take about 20 minutes to drill and we had to drill 20 holes some times, do the math. This part of the process took days and was slow and careful. I could work inside the studio on my second sculpture (bronze) that was just in the clay stage.

The Processes: Bronze and Stone (The Evolution)

The Stones are here!!



Relaxing and the Studio space!


Building the Armature for bronze "Auto Pod" in China (video below)


I arrived and the studio was huge, a gigantic ware house that was used to store cars out of the bad weather. Some of the other artists were already working, but I showed up a few days late because of registration at the college. I was ready to work, six weeks is a short time to create two sculptures, so the metal armature for the clay work had to be built (it is cast into bronze later) and besides the stones had not arrived yet.