A Site for Keeping Up with the Hartigans
|
|
| We're Up To Something A Site for Keeping Up with the Hartigans |
|
|
Tuesday, March 11, 2008 METAL CASTING 301 - MIDTERM Good gawd where did February go?!?!?It’s a good thing I only took one class this semester. Casting metal takes a lot of time. Let’s review. At semester start I was to take a five pound block of wax and create a sculpture that would eventually be covered in a ceramic shell and melted out. Thus the definition of “Lost wax bronze.” I decided to create an installation piece called “29 frogs and one toad in a bucket” Based on personal experiences with the kids when they were younger and a book my son wrote and illustrated…. I’m getting very tired of frogs.  Gated and Sprued   Once these little guys are all cast in bronze I will be in “chasing” hell. That’s where I will have to cut off all the gates and sprues, fix the flaws and move on to patina. I had another idea, I’m not sure you can tell what this is, and I tried to remove the background (not my best attempt) for better clarification. But it’s a fraying rope and the arms of someone climbing up it or hanging on. Not sure what I’m going to do with this piece, hopefully cast it in iron.  In the mean time we were to create a “scratch mold” to cast in aluminum. A scratch mold is just that, you scratch an enantiamorph (word of the day) into a block of sand, sprue, gate and vent it and cast it. These are my aluminum pieces. I had the absolutely brilliant idea of turning them into a whole key, puzzle box thing… one week before the critique on it.  With my final wax piece also being due the same day, seemed like I’d gotten myself in somewhat of a pickle time wise so I put my “S.A’s” or “Student Assistants”on it (in other words John and Aron). Hey, the professor can have a Teachers Assistant, I can have Student Assistants. So John and Aron (mostly John) created the puzzle box and a damn fine job they did. Closed and locked  Unlocked and Open  The solution is to make the keys align to form a circle. Clever no? I think I got an “A”.  Of course no class is complete without a mid-term exam, which I successfully bombed. I read the book, I highlighted important facts, I made flash cards and studied for days. What can I say I freeze on tests.  So that’s the latest on metal casting. Oh, I just have to show you this wicked cool rocking chair. It’s one of the grad students, when it rocks the seeds in the top piece sound like soft waves breaking on the beach. Man where do people come up with these ideas? I’ll never be that creative.   
posted by me |
11:22 AM |
1 comments
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||
|
|||||