Sculpture and Boris Artzybasheff #3

Detail of above two page spread.

Sculpture and Boris Artzybasheff #2

All artwork is by Boris Artzybasheff is from the book "Gay-neck the Story of a Pigeon" by Dhan Gopal Mukerji.

The grim reaper

A lot of war is going on in this little square:air battles, a tank, bombs, barbed wire front lines and ruined trees.

More in the next post.

Sculpture and Boris Artzybasheff

All artwork by Boris Artzybasheff

The title caught my eye, "Gay-Neck, the Story of a Pigeon."
How could I resist?

I confess that I haven't read Dhan Gopal Mukerji 's book, but I have devoured the black and white illustrations by Boris Artzybasheff. The book won the Newberry Award for children's literature in 1928. Both men lead pretty amazing lives, Gopal Mukerji came from an upper class Indian family and the other fled the Russian Revolution.

The artwork in Gay-neck looks like paper-cuts and is a wild blend of 1920's Deco and Indian patterning.

More work by Boris Artzybasheff in the next post.

Sculpture and the first paper based transistor

Sculptor Beatriz Cunha has posted on her blog news of the first paper based transistor.

Created by Portuguese scientists, the discovery opens the door for new disposable electronics devices, like paper displays, smart labels, smart packaging, bio-applications, RFID tags, among others.

Read the full story on Beatriz's site.

Sculpture and Winter Light

The winter sunlight is low in the sky, often flattening objects to black silhouettes. 

Those silhouettes cast long shadows that seem more vivid, more real than the objects themselves.

Even the shadows of a bridge seem more substantial than the bridge itself

Art is really about understanding how to use light and shadow to tell a story. Take a walk to see how the winter light changes familiar things........

Sculpture and Duncan McRoberts.

Here's the finished ceiling panel, designed by Duncan McRoberts, ready for molding. 
 In the center there is an example of runwork, which is plaster that's been shaped into a specific profile. I don't have any pictures of it installed.

Finally, a use for those saved scraps of rosewood!

I made these wooden tools specifically for this project. One end of each stick is used to create a clean beveled channel, the other end is a very shallow curve used for modeling. I cut and filed a tongue depressor (at the far left) to be a comb tool.

The metal spheres are standard pattern maker tools, the wooden ones are used in ceramics. I made the largest one with a knob and a dowel.

Here's a cast from the mold to show you how each detail of this work is shaped by a specific tool.

If you want to make work this tight, you never touch it directly. By only using selected tools you can maintain both exact measurements and uniformity of form and surface texture.

Sculpture and Duncan McRoberts

A home by the architect, Duncan McRoberts, is featured in the Dec/Jan issue of Oregon Home Magazine.

A few years ago, I worked with McRoberts on a very different residence. The project was a 4x 5 foot elaborate ceiling, sort of a decorated cake of ornament. The rest of the house gave new meaning to excess. Elaborate faux finishes, High French, low french, and lots of

What I enjoyed most about the work was that I had to develop new tools and techniques. For me this was technical sculpture, lots of measuring and using every trick I could devise to keep it as symmetrical and exact as possible.

I enlarged McRoberts drawings to full scale.

 I placed clear acrylic over the blueprint and traced out each component. Then I cut all the parts out and had matching right and left templates to begin modeling. This photo shows two symmetrical ornaments being checked for accuracy.

Out of context I think this looks like some sort of 19th C medal.

This center medallion took the most time. I worked from the center outwards. I established the maximum clay height of the relief for one quarter of it, then carefully modeled each section to match. Each line and division of form is exactly the width of a tool specially made for this project.

More in the next post.