Casting and Bone Installations

      Last week here at Osage I have gotten a lot of casting and installation work done. The casting studio is up in full swing. With three new molds in plaster casting rotations and four molds in wax casting things are always busy in the casting studio. I hope to have enough bones cast in plaster by the end of October for some new great installations in November. I might have to go buy some more hydrastone because I am going through it like it’s nothing. So far I have almost used 150 lbs of hydraston and I think I will only need like a bag or two more to finish up casting plaster bones for the new installations. Also last week I got a chance to collect another cow skeleton. This skeleton was like seven plus years old and I got a good amount of bones from the skeleton. But a lot of the bones the earth had taken and really started breaking them down. The skull was pretty much gone and what was left was pretty soft and grown over with roots and plant life so I left it. I also found a turtle shell that was all cleaned out as well so that was also added into my collection. So as of now I have so many bones that I will have to have help in bringing them home. Some will make it back to my apartment and a lot of them will go to my studio for future projects. I will have so much work to do in my studio that my social life will be pretty much be destroyed. But I will be happy making new molds of bones in my studio and getting new work pushed out and into shows and galleries.

      I am also really excited because last week I also got two new installations done as well. Yes two! I was looking for some really cool places here at Osage to place the new installations. I think things tuned out really well with both installations. The first one is a tree installation. I took three trees and connected then with bones. It almost looks like a bone fence growing up both sides of the middle tree. The installation looks awesome but really hard to photograph. A lot of the angles turned out flat and didn’t show the bones relationship with the trees as well as I wanted but the photos still give you a good idea of the installation. Just wish I could bring more people here to see these installations. I would really enjoy some feedback on them. Also the original installation is so awesome pictures just don’t do them justice but it’s the only way I have to share these installations with you. So the other installation is in a creek bed in a rocky area with two rocks almost creating a valley. The bones following that shape and create there owe shape over the rocks as well. This installation is just simply amazing. I had a lot more bones to work with one this one and that always makes the installation grow and demand space. If it rains really big the installation will be washed away but for now it is very beautiful and really has such a nice relationship with its surroundings. I wish I could bring people in to see these installations because they are just simply beautiful. I will have the photos of the two new installations up on Flicker so you can go check them out. Well until next week when I have more work to share thank you for your ongoing support. Love ya!  

Casting and working with Clay

      This week at Osage has been frustrating and productive. I am still casting with the new molds I made from last week and getting about three bones a day from each new mold in plaster. I’m also getting one wax a day from four older molds. I will have four new sculptures to cast in bronze or aluminum when I get back to Cincinnati. I am also working on a sculpture proposal for a sculpture here at Osage. If all goes well with this proposal I will be working on a six foot metal sculpture to install in Osages sculpture garden. But that’s in the future and who know what’s going to happen there. My studio here at Osage is going well in the casting department and getting work done. I am also getting ready to collect another cow skeleton. It’s about seven years old but I am very excited. I Think I’m going to do a print series from this skeleton but that’s just ideas for now. I will be very busy when I get back to Cincinnati. I’m also about ready to pull up the Installations here at Osage and do two more Installations on October fifteenth. So I am really looking forward to that as well in the upcoming weeks here at Osage.
      Now onto my frustration for this week. My friends at Coreclay sent me some clay to start getting ready for my residency with them. I was so excited but little did I know what I was in store for me. Here at Osage there is a manual potter’s wheel and I thought that without know anything about clay I would be able to sit down and create a five pound pot from scratch. Well first I realized I needed water to work with the clay and then I realized I needed to center the clay on the wheel. By the time I got it centered it was already too late. The clay was already to wet and it took my almost six hours of stabbing blindly at something I know nothing about and having no one to answer question or show me what needs to be done. So I came home frustrated and defeated but still determined. I watched three hours of ceramics videos on youtube to help me in what I was about to attempt again tomorrow. Mind you none of the video had a manual wheel all electric. So round two starts and I now have a better feel for clay and I am now able to cone and center my clay on the wheel. I can also make the clay rise and lower on the wheel as well. I actually made about three pots on the manual wheel but I worked each one to much and they would collapse in on themselves. Plus the clay was still to wet from yesterday but I felt a little better about clay and working with it. Now we are on to day three and I was determined to make something out of clay. So I rolled out slabs thinking I should be able to make something out of a familiar form. I did make a small rectangle open top and it seemed it was pretty well together so I put it out in the sun to dry. I came back the next day and it had fallen apart as if it had been pealed apart. I shook my head and laughed out loud! I now know I am in for one hell of a residency with Coreclay when I get back. I hope they can help me with clay because I am not doing so well by myself out here at Osage. So that is my frustration for this week. We will see if I tackle clay again next week. I needed to take a breather so I wouldn’t break and of my bone castings from my frustrations with clay. As always thank you for your ongoing support. Until next week love ya!  

Casting and Bone Installations

This week at Osage has been a good week. As of right now I have completed three new rubber molds. Two new Seal Bones and a Horse leg Bone which at this time all are being cast in hydrastone for new installations in November. I am getting about three casting a day from each mold if the bone casting doesn’t break. This should be enough bone casting for each of the new installations. So October is going to be a crazy casting month for me. I am also casting waxes for bronzes when I get back to Cincinnati. I have four molds right now being cast in wax. I should have enough wax castings to cast some new great sculpture and cast some new work for my upcoming residency at Core Clay studio. The idea for Core Clay is to combine metal castings with a ceramic earth element as well as to cast bones in other materials such as porcelain or slip casting for future installations. But this is all in the future and as far as right now I am casting and installing my but off.

Also this week I got another Bone Installation done. I am really excited about this new work. I found a great place in a creek bed and in the creek bed there was this awesome tree with a great root system. This place had great rocks and had a nice feel to it with the water around this little platform where I placed the Bones. I basically always let the bone and nature decide what goes on. Sometime I start trying to fight the flow of nature and that’s usually when I run into trouble. But this installation went fairly well and with a really great outcome. I have pictures loaded on flicker if you want to see the new installation. It wasn’t easy getting to this place on 165 acres of rural land. Thanks to Osage I got use of a truck to transport my bones to the installation sight. I think I almost got stuck like five times in creek beds and rutted fire roads. The poor truck took a beating and the bones made it all in one piece. Going back was way more fun then transporting sculpture in a 4x4 playground not to mention I only had rear wheel drive. Well that’s about it for this week. As always thank you for your ongoing support. Until next week love ya!

Casting and Bone Installations

This week at Osage has been a good week. I have done a lot of mold making and casting. As of right now I have just finished two rubber molds of seal bones. Yes seal Bones! No I didn’t kill it! But I have a flipper bone and a femur of some kind. I still have to give them the real test and cast them but that’s coming very soon. I am very excited about finishing the new molds. I am picking out new bones to start new molds. As of right now it looks like a horse leg bone and a couple of cow ribs and clavicle I think but don’t quite know. I’m an artist not a vet LOL. I might have to order more rubber to keep the bone mold making going. Here at Osage I have the time to concentrate on these things instead of being consumed by my everyday life in Cincy. But I miss a lot of my friends and motivation that Cincinnati offered me. But still all I do here is either Sculpture, work on grants and shows, research galleries, go to museums in St. Louis , walk my dog, feed Lily the horse some pears and sleep in so life is good. But I still miss my Crew back in Cincy and all the projects I have waiting for me when I get back. Here at Osage I also finished two more Bone Installation. I am very excited about this! It so cool to have a place to install these Bone installations. I have 165 acres of woods and fields to install whatever I want. So I will be looking for new spots for the next installation October 1st. The Bone installation in the rock garden this week turned out so awesome! I had to sit with it for quite awhile! Took like 200 pictures of the installation for documentation and to apply for shows. Sad because all that saw the original was me and some animals but who knows who will stumbled upon it and enjoyed it. I can only imagine if I came across something like that unexpected and what I would think. I would be very inquisitive and have lots of questions. Maybe video of people’s reactions will be a great idea for the future but until then it rests out in the elements with all the other life in the woods. I have pictures of all my installation at flicker if you want to see the installations I’ve been working on. I also have got the casting studio in full swing. Casting plaster for installations here at Osage and waxes for bronzes for when I get back to Cincy from existing molds soon to be new molds to be casting new bones for new sculpture. But that’s not until next week. As always thank you for your ongoing support and the Art Revolution might be out in nowhere land but my voice is still just as loud and will be with new motivation thanks to all of you! Until next week love ya!

Casting and Cleaning Bones at Osage

This week at Osage has been very productive. There are two major events that happened this week. The first major event is I got my studio up and running. I am now casting and making molds. I have started casting in plaster for more installation here at Osage. I also started casting waxes to get the wax work done here at Osage so I can get two more Bronzes done when I get back to Cincinnati and start casting again at Casting Arts and Technologies. Then I also have two molds started. I am awaiting a package from Casting Arts and Technologies for the proper separator, cups and a scale to weigh out the rubber for the molds. When I get the package the mold work will be off and making rubber molds again. I have so many bones that a lot of them will have to come back to Cincinnati and make molds of them in my studio.

This brings me to my second major event. This week I got the opportunity to fully take an animal a deer to be precise from living to bone. It was an awesome experience! I really believe everyone who eats meat should go through this for the very reason you take a life when you eat meat. There is a transformation of living beauty of a deer to being food to feed you or your family. Hard to describe that transformation from life to food but it is very primal and uplifting as well as humbling and a sense of thanks to the recently decease. I learned how to field dress an animal and skin an animal. I also learned a sharp knife is your best friend when skinning an animal. We ended up having the deer roughly cut down and put into the fridge in a matter of an hour. Then I took the head and rest of the deer went into the woods for other animals to feed and live off the remains. The head took six hours of boiling and then some cleaning of what was left on the bones. Now I have a full female deer skull and I really have a connection with this addition to my collection. I sometimes feel like the Predator from the movies collecting these skulls almost like trophies LOL but really the beauty I see in them is my fascination as well as the representation behind them. I can’t wait till next week when I get a buffalo skull and possibly and elk! I will also start a new Bone Installation here at Osage and be casting my butt off I hope. As always thank you for your ongoing support!

Bone Collecting

Well today at Osage I learned about chiggers! I have about 100 chigger bites from walking in the woods and fields. I did however found some remedies. One is sulfur soap two is massive OFF sprayed all over and three is Benadryl and anti-itch lotion so you can sleep. On the up side I did get almost a whole horse skeleton out of my pain and suffering. I am really excited about this horse skeleton. There is so many new shapes of bone and I can wait till they dry out so I can start making molds of them. Hope to reclaim some cow skeletons tomorrow. I am still working on the bone installation here at the studio. The piece has grown in size using two different shapes and has a circular repetitive pattern throughout its whole structure. It’s coming along really nicely.

It’s another day at Osage and today I went back into the wood where they told me where a whole cow skeleton would be. Let’s just say I almost cried when I saw the whole skeleton laying there. It was so beautiful and there were so many bones I have not seen before. I am very excited to get started on picking out bones and making molds of them to start some more sculpture. So in two days I have almost collected like 100 bones. I am so excited and can’t wait to start playing with them. Yes you can call me Bone Daddy LOL

The summery this week has been a pretty good week for me here at Osage. I now have two skeletons I almost have my casting studio up and running. I hope to be casting plaster and wax bones and start set up for some new molds in this studio next week for sure. I also got my care package from my friends at Suder’s Art Store. I got my drawing supplies so I can start drawing bones or skulls. My life here is nothing but bones, sculpture and living life on a farm. All work very well together. I hope to next month start doing some installations in the woods and documenting them. But for now I am blogging to you drinking coffee and petting my dog Ruckus and Ruckus new friend Zeus. Till next week signing off and thank you all for your Support!!! The Art Revolution is making mad art for the battles to come. Keep me proud and keep the motivation high!!!!

Osage Artist in Residency

Well her I am at Osage Artist in Residency program in Osage county Missouri. I am really out in farm country and I have meet Lily and her mom (horses) 4 mo mo’s and the chicken coop with about 12 chickens 2 roosters where I am suppose to go and collect my eggs but I haven’t gotten to that yet. I have been here at Osage just about a week and I have gotten a better feel to my surroundings but I’m still getting use to the slow down mode and focusing primarily on my sculpture. This week all I have been doing is unpacking and settling in. I also have started to do some trail walking with Ruckus my greyhound and bone collecting in the forest. So far I have collected turtle bones and a skull of a bird of prey. Still don’t know what kind of bird but I say a vulture. I did manage to start assembling some sculpture in the studio to get it ready for installations around Osage. The food here is very different. I have eaten deer chili, fried chicken, poke sausage and beef. All raised and killed and processed here on this farm. Sounds a little cruel but I really feel better eating like this and seeing how the animals are raised then eating processed America. Other then that I hope to get casting, sculpting, and mold making by the end of next week. I also hope to have some pictures to show as well. As always thank you so much for your support!!! The Art Revolution grows from you and you are the Art Revolution!!! Keep me proud and keep the motivation going! Until next week love ya!