Sculpture Studio, time to shine.

A new semester, a new goal. This semester I am finally in sculpture studio! I now get to plan and create  a body of work that I choose! My body of work is about perception. I struggle with an autoimmune disease, and want to show the two sides of how the world views me and how I see myself. I am doing so, by casting body parts such as my first work, the hand and part of the arm. I am keeping the top of the hand and arm "normal" and making the palm side abstracted with bones and tendons etc. emphasized. I am utilizing a mirror to reflect the underside of the hand/arm as how I am reflected as normal to the world, but in actuality I see myself as the abstracted side, full of pain and hardships. 

the clay hand below is a small model of how my final piece will be reflected

first, I sculpt the work out of clay

Secondly, I cut the hand into three parts. The arm is cut off at the wrist, and the curling finger is cut off. Then, a wooden rod is drilled through the bottom of the whit board and the clay part is stuck into, as seen below. This is done to the hand as well.

Next, I place more wooden rods to connect the fingers to the board allowing for air bubbles to be released.

The mold making process is next

The arm is molded with a blanket mold, just as I had done the Buddha before.

The hand part is broken into three parts, and has rubber poured directly onto the clay.

The finger, after breaking the clay trying to mold the same way as the arm, is glued back together and hot glued to the bottom of a bucket with rubber poured on top.

You can see here the hand's mold how it is in three sections

Then, wax is poured into the cleaned out rubber molds the make a wax copy of all three parts.

/Users/melissarutherford/Desktop/melissa.band

Metal Fabrication project

Metal Fabrication project: 

I stared this project from a pen drawing I had done 

The plan was a 3'x6' final piece, using 1/4'' steel rods

I cut and bent the steel utilizing clamps to create half circles and circles in order to begin creating the skeleton structure

The process was very tedious, cutting bending, using props to balance each piece into place so that I could weld it onto the structure

After all the pieces were welded on the structure, I used the grinder to smooth out all the welding seams

The last step was color application, spray paint and acrylic

I greatly enjoyed making my creature come to life. The process is not over this summer I plan to cover the structure with plaster strips giving him body and them painting the creature to look more like my drawing.

inspirational Video for my monster series

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwgqenxNUfs

Buddha!

Step 1: Sculpt Buddha from clay 

 

: Create a blanket mold- I achieved this by tightly wrapping my clay sculpted Buddha in saran wrap. Then rolling out  1/4'' clay wall to build around contouring the saran wrapped Buddha. Next, splitting the Buddha into four sections by another 1/4'' clay wall (which is what you can see dividing the plaster mold below).  I then plastered each section taking out the second clay walls as the plaster dried. After the plater mold was completed, I took the mold apart, removed the saran wrap and the rest of the clay walls  from the original sculpted Buddha. Placed only the plaster mold back together over the original clay Buddha and tightened it with rubber ties. I filled in the cracks with clay to seal it from the next step of pouring liquid silicon. Drilled a hole about an inch and half through the top of the mold to pour the silicone. Let dry over night. The next day took the mold apart, carved out the clay, put the mold back together with only the silicone and plaster parts. Tied with rubber ties, the placed upside down in a bucket. Melted the brown wax, and poured the wax in the silicone mold for fifteen minutes, then poured it back out letting a thin wax wall left inside the mold. After cooling I patched up and holes in the wax and took it carefully out of the plaster/silicone mold. 

The Next process is to sprue up the two halves of wax that I cut.

After the two halves are sprued up, the next step is to dip them into the ceramic mixer to make a ceramic shell. This is done many times, some with fine and corse sands to build up the shell.

After hardening the shell, the end of the shell must be cut off with a chop saw, then burn out the paper cup to expose the wax sprue, which is then put into a kiln to melt the wax out of the ceramic shell. 

All the while the bronze is in it's own kiln heating up to molten degrease 

The sand pits are prepared with the ceramic shells (after the wax has been emptied) 

Then we suite up in loge sleeved clothing, hard leather boots, leather aprons, leather jackets, fire proof shin guards, and foot coverings, bandanna gloves, and face shield.

After the pour the shell is filled with bronze and taken out of the sand pits to cool

Busted away the ceramic shell

Next step is to cut off the sprue and clean up the bronze and piece the Buddha back together again!

 Then buff the uneven milky surface of the bronze off and file down the seam

last step is to wax seal the bronze