I now have my kiln back in my home studio after removing it from the gallery basement which seemed like the ideal place for it at the time I bought it. So it’s set up now at home where it’s much more convienient to monitor. I fired a couple of older raw clay original models with complete success, including the Astor Place subway beaver model which was just 1/4″ less tall than the inside of the kiln with the lid closed. I’m considering “converting” the Art Deco D5 model into a terracotta line, here’s the original clay model that I fired in the kiln a year ago after making the…

I have  the Nashville clients’ project finished, with the last two crates shipping in the morning, and the city pool projects’ concrete panel finished as well. The concrete pool panel turned out to be a major pain unlike any other! and to think, this is a donated sculpture and it was to be a simple matter to cast the concrete into the mold I made. After casting the first one there were two things I didn’t like, one was it had a lot of fair sized air bubble holes on the surface, the other was the acid stain I’ve used so well on many concrete casts absolutely looked all wrong…

A client who purchased an Art deco era theater and adjacent former store building recently contacted me for sculptures to install on the former store building. The one story brick facade of the store building was in very poor condition, enough that the facade had to be removed due to a bulge in the brickwork, and then be re-mortared back in place. The building’ name panel was preserved but the terracotta shield above it was cracked and missing a corner of it. It was decided to replace the broken shield with an Athena keystone (the nearby street names have a Greek theme, and there is a replica parthenon in Nashville…

Still very busy this week too trying to get other things done between the almost constant every other days rains and now the end of summer, the least of which is re-doing the brakes on my car which required several trips to NAPA and yet more to order a couple more parts, the other is finishing up a large mold for a concrete cast for the city pool building- they already started demolition on the old place and will start construction soon so my concrete cast has to be ready for installation. Last but not least is I switched over to a new computer system running Linux Mint and setting…

I have been busy this week, so I barely touched the model but I managed to get a little time on it today.

I finally got caught up with other client’s orders, crates and more so I did a little bit of work on this today at least, rough laying out the design as this begins.

As I completed my form for the shape yesterday, today I started work on laying out the model by pressing the clay into the form and rough sketching landmarks on the surface.

The Mulcaster building was once located at 1156-1162 (incorrectly designated as 1297 according to one source) Third Avenue, NYC (demolished ca 1965) on it’s facade was this spandrel panel, probably more than one: Dates: ca. 1885 Dimensions: 25″ x 28″ x 7 1/2″ Located in the Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Frost. Description: Pressed, fired red terracotta rectangular plaque with head of youth, a butterfly-boy or girl sipping nectar from blossoms through a straw. I decided to make my version of this 19″ high, 22″ wide which is the same proportion but a little smaller and this begins with the box form for the shape:

I made the first cast this morning from the new mold, the mold was not terribly difficult to work with but it’s very large and since the plaster shell of it is fresh it still has about 5 to 6 gallons of free water in it that has to evaporate out, meanwhile the extra weight of the water adds about 50 pounds of excess dead-weight. I still need to cast a master to store away for future use in replacing the mold, and one for a client’s order today as well. It took 4 gallons of water in two 5 gallon buckets mixed with the cast-stone to make enough slurry…

The mold was removed from the clay model last night, it was difficult to pull the rubber off since it was pretty thick/stiff in places it needed to be and a lot of undercuts and keyhole areas, the original unfired clay model mostly surviced the mold making process, only the curled tail broke off but it was a fairly clean break and it can be repaired so that eventually- I hope- when I buy a larger kiln I can try firing it. Nr 170 did not survive the mold making process but that’s ok, I have a plaster master from it and the mold. The models were all made from…