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Its been a while - but I'm busy back at college and Johns been off sailing the oceans blue (or at least the lakes and rivers). More casting activity to follow soon!

In the meantime, I've been exhibiting as part of the 50/50 show at Artsite in Swindon. I've had a couple of serious sounding enquiries regarding my piece 'Aluminium overcast #2' - PLUS Matthew Hamilton-Wright has taken this rather fantastic photo of it:

"Project Cage" update

This week saw significant steps being made with my latest project. 

I left off last time having all but finished the (giant) sand mould.  Here it is, completely finished and ready to pour (well, actually it was set on its side to pour, but this is near as damn it ready and it looks quite pie-like here, which I like).

Toby and I then poured the thing.  We paid extra special care to the quality of aluminium used and to the additives we introduced to the molten metal because (as always) I was after perfection.  Here is the piece fresh from the pour:

And now, with the inner sand removed, quite a lot of flashing, but it was all very flimsy stuff:

Finally, after hours of vigourous fettling, I ended up with this:

It turned out quite well methinks.  In fact, Toby was so excited, he needed a lie down:

The next step will be to smooth and polish the outer surface and then start work on the interior piece (I'm thinking a brass lost wax effort as per "Tobyesque" would look nice).

Take it easy folks!

John

Busy week

Just a few musings over a busy week. First off, I spent a charming day in the company of Ms Joanna Bell, restoring one of my babies, Naissance. The unfotunate sculpture had suffered a bit in the heavy winter - but a bit of tlc, some new plaster (and plenty of tea from Joanna!) had everything back as it should be in short order. Here is Naissance looking nice and new is her lovely surroundings:

John's due over early tomorrow and I'm hoping we can both crack on. I need to work on a special request - a contact wants me to make a unicorn, plus I need to get a shift on with a fish for the Waterpark!

Toby

Addendum from John.... here's Toby working on that Unicorn:

Back on the blog

I have indeed been remiss with my blogging (see Toby's comment below).  having said that, I haven't actually done much of late - the allure of being side tracked into various Robson family projects often proving too strong to resist :-)

I have however, made some progress with "project cage" (see the photo of the pinkish carved core in Toby's blog entry below).  For now, all I want to say is that it will consist of a cast aluminium "cage" (the carved core) and that there will be a central "item" (for want of a less ambiguous description) trapped within said cage.  It'll sit on some kind of lead-wrapped base.  Or maybe oiled wood.  Or possibly a carved potato.  Who knows.

John