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!

getting more crisp . . .

Here's a shot of the whole piece as it is today, the day after Christmas. People often ask, "How long did it take you to make this?" My standard answer is, "I don't really want to know, so I don't keep track of hours". Well, this time's an exception – I have been keeping track and it's right around 53 hours so far – not too bad if you consider the block as it was at the beginning. Without the help of pneumatic tools it would easily be over three times that long, so I'm pretty happy with the "swift" progress. The double photo above shows that some of the surfaces have reached their final resolution and only sanding remains. Others are quite far from that state and I now have only 27 days left before I need it to be done and ready for entry in a juried exhibition.

The details . . .

Instead of showing the whole stone, which really isn't changing that much in appearance at this stage, I decided to post a couple of detail shots. One of the photos shows that the very top of the piece is nearly finished, while the other is a good example of
how complex things get as two or more forms meet at low angles and disappear into each other. It may seem as if this is getting too involved in a very small area while other parts of the piece are still quite rough, but sometimes continuing with the larger forms depends on being certain that the join between them is going to work out as planned.

Today I'll install a moisture trap in the air line due to the presence of water – a bad thing that will shorten tool life. It's a consequence of the compressor working in a much colder place than my cozy studio.