dip dip dip dipdipdipdip

Dipping, coating the wax models... so much work.. silica dust seems to get into every thing.. I have most of the coating done on one complete torso and I am close to being ready to cast it. I have two more complete torsos in the dipping stages and each coating takes about 15 minutes to do. Once or twice a day, I go to the sculpture studio and complete this part of the process and then clean up the dipping area. Of the various tasks involved with producing a lost cast bronze casting, I think the dipping is the most labor intense, most capricious in terms of forgetting it is art and just physically handling this massive object that could be dropped or bumped at any moment, and boring beyond boring. Yet, if I am not mindful, I could make a bad decision and the coating would be uneven and then I would lose the whole damn thing.
In the lost wax set, I had to let go of what I wanted to see in the first set of figures and remake the torsos in what I could salvage from the pile of broken, melted and sagging wax pieces. This business of letting go of hundreds of hours of work that is pure labor with very little inspirational impetus is very challenging. It goes with the giving up of precious art in the sketch books as well.

Today, during the sketch book exchange, we discussed the possibility of collaborating on some sculptural forms that are evolving from the work in the books~ so that would be cool.

I posted my Packet one for G3 and I feel sort of tired. I am going to see a movie from the environmental film festival today, so I'd better get moving!