I decided to make a miniature room, something I’ve wanted to do for many years but never got around to it, here is the progress thus far:

Photo

For those interested, here’s an updated photo from tonight of the model in progress. I was busy today but I managed to work on it abut an hour this evening. I raised the concrete walkway surround up and angled it to add some additional depth illusion as I had planned to do, I like the effect and it also makes the pool water look lower. And Sunday some more progress after an hour and a half or so:

I finished the mold this morning and pulled two casts from it so far, I will be heading downstairs to cast a master cast for storage in a few minutes. A client wanted a red terracotta color, I cast one with the tint base for the Buff Yellow and one with the Red Terra Cotta tint base and sent him the photo to decide better. I think a dirty bronze would be stunning.

I have started on the pool sculpture today, this is a large model, several inches wider than others I have made. There’s 160 pounds of clay in the box form and the initial roughed out concept for the design is just lightly incized on the surface to see how it might look. Some possible changes might include enlarging the lettering though this will require the three words to be creatively staggered on a couple of lines to fit rather than horizontally across in one line as shown. They may also move down a little and the sun disk made a little smaller. The lettering on the finished panel will be…

What a shame the 1899 building was totally destroyed by fire during renovations! The exterior facade was nothing special, a little bit of somewhat plain ornaments in terracotta, but in an interior shot of a video taken a year ago I noticed this interesting design in the plaster capitals: I might be interested in doing a model after that design, I’ll have to think it over!

I finally got around to replacing the deteriorating D4 Art Deco panel mold with a new one, it really needed replacing. I also finished the new mold of the Nr715 St Vincent’s Hospital , Leon Lowensteinic clinic “Sun worshipper” panel, so casts of this model are now available for the first time.

I found the 22 story 1921 Cunard building 25 Broadway in NYC has a number of interesting nautical related keystones and carvings as well as ceilings since it was occupied by the Cunard ship owners. It’s interior is stunningly and it’s a designated landmark. The keystones and decorations include a figure blowing wind, snails and shells, but one thing that caught my eye was this roundel of a sailing ship, and it’s difficult to tell but the lower floors where this is located are carved stone, hard to imagine the detail on this being carved in stone which is why I think it may be terracotta with a matt granite…

I was very surprised when I did a google street view walk around Washington Sq Park in NYC and looking at the apartment building I lived in as a teen, amazingly not only could I see it, but the foot tall letter “R” I mortared onto the bricks outside our kitchen window around 1974 is still there 40 years later! I remember mixing the cement and troweling on with my arm snaked around the window which opened out, and forming the letter backwards to me and somewhat “blind” as I couldn’t reach far enough out to see what I was doing very well. This is pretty cool.

I made this new hanging sign for the gallery building entrance today using wood letters from signlettersource.com When I figured out after making one letter out of plywood- how much time I would have to spend dinking around with cutting out 15 letters, sanding them etc., and the fact these purchased on line were a little over $4 each, it was a no-brainer, I could have spent the better part of an afternoon printing out paper letters to carbon paper trace onto plywood, then scroll cut them all out and I’d never the nice shark clear edges and corners they do with a commercial CNC router. It took me exactly…