This piece is finished . . . Solid Geometry #3: Falling Rock

After logging over 40 hours on this stone over the last 10 days, I'm very happy that it's finally done. This will be my last post for a while due to the fact that I've got to do some clean-up in my metal shop before I can begin preparation for an exhibition in November. I'll most likely work on metal sculpture till the weather gets nice enough for me to start my next stone in my outside studio. I'm a bit tired of the dust at the moment. Anyway, two views of the finished piece are shown above and should enlarge by clicking on the photo. I'll be sure to post some photos of my first aluminum piece of 2010 as soon as it's ready.

And now . . . the other side

It was time today to get the other side resolved to make sure there were no alignment problems. The top of the piece is light enough now that I think the forms near the bottom are strong enough to support the piece through the rest of the carving process. All of the shapes are in their final form now and all that remains is refinement of about a third of the shapes and then finishing. I'm right around 90 hours on this piece now, and expect to be ready for finishing in another 10 hours or so.

Outdoor studio in January

This is why I also have a carving studio inside.

Shaping up

Starting to get some of the forms near a finished state now. Final finishing will involve both dry and wet sanding and then oiling the surface of the piece, imparting the desired buttery mat finish. So far, right about 75 hrs. The minor debacle described in the previous post has been resolved and can be seen in context in the photo above.

oops!

Stone is an extremely unforgiving medium. I'm reminded of that when I pull a stunt like this. I was working on side "A" shown in the photo above and yeah, I got it nice and smooth. But in doing so, and focusing on only that side, I cut off what should have been a projection of form "B", based on its thickness (not visible in this photo). Once it's gone it's gone, so I was faced with two choices: 1. cut off more of form "B", shown at "C", so that the missing corner would fall inside of the form of which side "A" is a part, or 2. Glue a piece of scrap stone onto side A at just the right spot and carve it into the needed shape. Since option 2. would have compromised the integrity of the whole piece, the choice was easy - if unpleasant. It meant that in order to have a consistent width of form "B", I'd have to carve out a fairly small triangular area "D" - time consuming but certainly possible. As the photo shows, this is what I chose to do. So, outside of the piece actually breaking into pieces at some point, accidentally carving off something I'll need later is the greatest pitfall. Vigilance!