Dragging Out The Block And Standing It Up (Part 1) I recorded some of the process of dragging a 1000-pound block out and squaring it off so it would stand up vertically. It’s fun to impose your will on a half-ton of stone, but lifting or even sliding around heavy things is inherently dangerous. That’sContinue reading “A Figure In Stone #5: Standing Up Pt 1”
Tag Archives: studio art
The Figure In Stone #4: The Point Is…
I’ve been pounding away preparing the block and so far, the work has been almost all with the punch, AKA point-chisel, AKA point, AKA bull-point. Worse Than I Thought I knew a significant part of this block was sketchy. It had been left in the weather for many years (not by me) and you couldContinue reading “The Figure In Stone #4: The Point Is…”
The Last Shall Be The First
The technical process of making stone sculpture in any of the Modernist traditions tends to be very different from the way stone sculpture was made in the period from the Renaissance (Fourteenth to Fifteenth Centuries) to the collapse of the academic traditions after the First World War (1918.) The differences stem from a fundamental change in approach that traces back to early 20th Century politics.
A Figure In Stone #2
Making The Clay Miniature As I mentioned in the A Figure In Stone #1 I’m going to start with a 1/2 scale model and enlarge it. Here’s how the small version came to be. Model #1 I don’t usually work with a live model in front of me. A real person might be the inspiration,Continue reading “A Figure In Stone #2”
A Figure In Stone #1
The Kickoff! This is the first in a series of posts about carving a female figure. This is episode #1 of a series on a significant scale project. I’ve been videoing since I started a few weeks ago. There should be a lot of postings and they might or might not have a YouTube (thisContinue reading “A Figure In Stone #1”
Old-School Materials Science
Classical Greek sculpture arrived abruptly as these things go. In the Fifth Century BCE, naturalistic sculpture suddenly replaced the stylized kouroi that had decorated Greek temples for centuries. The sensibility seems to change overnight. It was the same Greeks and there is no matching discontinuity in architecture, so what happened? A lot of things changedContinue reading “Old-School Materials Science”
A Sculpture Enlarging Machine Part 1
I’ve seen these in photos and old books but I’ve never seen one in the wild so I built one. It was a fun project and there’s some interesting geometry going on if that’s something that interests you.
Splitting Stone
One person working alone can split a stone of almost any size using little more than a drill, some steel wedges and a hammer. Brooklyn is a great place. I met a guy on the street one day and we started talking and somehow it came up that we both carved stone. What are theContinue reading “Splitting Stone”
The Perfect Sculptor’s Bench
Tired of making do with a woodworker’s workbench, I’ve spent a good part of my mandated Covid-19 holiday reworking an ancient design for a carpenter’s bench as a sculpture workbench. It’s a prototype, but I love the result so far. I’ve learned so much I’m thinking of making something similar specifically for stone. It’s beenContinue reading “The Perfect Sculptor’s Bench”
Sculpture Tech 