Casting

The thinking in art foundries seems to be, "If the technology was good enough for Michelangelo, why improve it?" Aren't we glad dentists don't feel the same way?

When people ask me what I do, I usually shrug a little and say "I'm a struggling artist and playwright." Then they usually say "What kind of art do you do?" and I laugh a little self-deprecatingly and reply "I'm a sculptor." If they're really brave and pursue the subject, I'll say "I make mixed media sculpture. That means I glue stuff together rather than carve or cast." And then we all try to change the subject.

Well, I lie a little teeny bit. I don't usually do any casting. But I felt Real Bad about that.

You know, back when I was finishing my B.A., I felt Real Bad that someone was going to give me an art degree in sculpture without me having to carve anything. So I carved something. Not a great success, but I got the gist of it. I can do it if I have to.

So along comes the day, a few years later, when someone gives me another art degree in sculpture, and I realize that I don't know how to cast metal. Let's be honest. When someone says to you, "I'm a sculptor...," you think that means they know how to carve and cast. I think that. We all do.

But casting metal is actually a pretty obscure, technical, macho area of sculpture this century. Well, any century.

And artists don't usually cast their own work, either. They get someone else to do it. Someone at a foundry that specializes in sculpture. A foundry that specializes in using the most archaic methods and materials possible. An art foundry. The thinking in art foundries seems to be, "If the technology was good enough for Michelangelo, why improve it?" Aren't we glad dentists don't feel the same way?

So I went to the Royal College of Art, in London, England, where they have a special program that trains people to run an art foundry. And I got a crash course in setting things on fire for fun and profit. Well, for fun.

Wanna know what it looks like? Go take a peek at my all-time favourite photograph of myself. I'm not identifiable, so you'll have to take my word that it's me. I'll be the one in the big navy-blue wool foundry suit, safety boots, leather gauntlets, hard-hat and visor, pouring a three-hundred pound pot of molten bronze, approximate temperature about a zillion degrees.

Now I just feel Real Bad because I don't have a foundry. I don't know how casting is going to fit into the rest of my work yet, but until I have access to a foundry again, it's strictly a hypothetical question. I have some wonderful tiny pieces (suitable for shipping across the Atlantic on a student budget), and a lot of patination sample tiles, and slides of a life-sized salmon (sort of) that I cast but couldn't bring home.

My casting fantasies revolve around sand-casting (green sand & CO2-bonded), becoming a patination wizard & designing the Foundry of the Future.