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Happy October Friends!

I am excited to announce that I am opening my studio to you through the Fort Collins Studio Tour. It is THIS Saturday and Sunday and there is a reception for all the artists on Friday at the Lincoln Center (see below). All are welcome.

Last year, Dave and I bought a new home and we finished a new studio. I would love for you to see it, enjoy my new creations and view some demonstrations. Plus we have a beautiful fall backyard. Out-of-towners invited too!

My address is 8501 Bruns Drive in way-south Fort Collins off of Co Rd 30.

“BHAG” stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal—pronounced “bee-hag."

As an emerging artist, I’ve applied to local, statewide and regional artist competitions, exhibits and RFPs (requests for proposals) over the last few years. All…NO! In 2019, I applied for the Loveland Sculpture in the Park show (that’s the BHAG) and was accepted for the 2020 show!!!

I’ve been affiliated with this show for years and years. Usually coming along the side of the artists in a support capacity: volunteering in the tent and serving as an art representative for my dear friend and mentor, Heidi Hoy. I just loved hanging around with art and artists, but never felt I quite measured up.

So, with the mindset of “if you don’t ask, the answer is always no,” I thought I would just try. I braced myself for another NO, but it didn’t turn out that way and I was accepted into the show. This pretty much blew my mind. The 2020 show was canceled because of Covid, but my invitation was extended to the 2021 show and here we are.

The Stretch

Setting a BHAG goal has set in motion some interesting things for me. I can feel it in my chest—an expansion of myself and how I see myself. Casting out into the unknown territory of my own potential. Trusting the result of a creative impulse. I feel BOTH excitement and uneasiness. I have found, over the years, that this is a powerful combination for me. This BHAG is pure gold.

I’m so excited to be presenting a body of work that I am proud of. I invite you to come to this amazing show that includes 160 artists offering over 2,000 pieces of sculpture. If you have not attended this show before, it will blow your mind. Come and see for yourself what a BHAG can do!

The Details

Sculpture in the Park 2021 is open to the public on Saturday, August 7th, from 9:30 am - 6:00 pm and on Sunday, August 8th from 9:30 am - 4:30 pm.  Admission is $10 per person and children under 14 years of age are admitted for free.  The Benson Sculpture Garden is at the intersection of Aspen and 29^th in Loveland. For more details: https://www.sculptureinthepark.org

The Broader Impact of the Show

As the Sculpture in the Park show has continued to grow and flourish, so has Benson Sculpture Garden.  With the proceeds generated from each annual show, over the past 36 years, the Loveland High Plains Arts Council has purchased 172 extraordinary pieces of sculpture valued at over $4 million.  This “public treasure” annually draws tens of thousands of visitors from around the globe.  It has been recognized as “one of the 200 most important modern and contemporary art sites around the world” and as “one of the 20 must-see contemporary art sites across the USA”.  It is also the number one attraction on Trip Advisor for Loveland.

When I created Chief Friday, I wanted two sizes: a monumental size and a smaller, collector size. I sculpted them--side-by-side--with nothing more than a pair of calipers. I enjoyed this process immensely; however, it took a lot of time and effort.

Chief Fridays connected by a set of calipers

I have since discovered a different way to get the same result-- by bringing old world processes and new world technology together.

My creative process culminates with the sculpted clay original. The remaining steps in the bronze production process are necessary to reproduce the original sculpture in a bronze casting.

Old World Process

The bronze production process I use has been around for a long time. It is known as the lost wax or cire-perdue method and there is evidence of its use since the 3^rd millennium BCE.

Here’s the process. I have a mold made of my original clay sculpture. Then a wax version is produced from the mold. At the foundry, they encase the wax in a ceramic shell (that can withstand the hot bronze). They then melt the wax out (cire-perdue), pour molten bronze into the shell. After the bronze cools, the ceramic shell is broken off. This bronze piece is now ready for some welding, metal chasing and patina.

New World Technology

Enter digital photography and 3-D printing. Now, when I want different sizes for my sculptures, I plan to use new world technologies. I have my original sculpture scanned, giving me a digital file. I can create bigger or smaller versions of my sculpture with this one digital file by 3-D printing a new replica of the original.

Digital image of Breakthrough

The original Breakthrough sculpture was about 17 inches tall. This was a really good size for the actual process of sculpting. Not too big and not too small. I could move it around to set the gesture. It was not too heavy to manage and not too small to where it would be difficult to get into the tiny spaces.

Clay original

I later decided to make the Breakthrough sculpture into a smaller size. I felt that this smaller piece would appeal to more collectors. The amazing thing about this one digital file is that I could go bigger too…how about 12 feet tall?

I cast the old calipers aside and had the original scanned. Using the digital file, I had a smaller replica 3-D printed in a polymer resin. I had a mold made of the replica and sent the mold off to the foundry. They produced a wax version which went through the cire-perdue process to produce the final bronze edition.

Large Breakthrough--3D printed polymer--mold--small Breakthrough

Although there are still challenges with 3D printing, this technology has opened up a huge new landscape for sculptors. There are new opportunities for detailed, small-sized sculptures—too small for fingers or even tools to create. And new opportunities to save time, effort and expense on larger monumental sculptures.

This blending of new and old gives me the best of both worlds. I can respond to specific needs of collectors—either to fit a particular setting or to reduce the cost. If someone wants a 12-foot bronze Trojan horse, I just run the numbers and set things in motion. In the case of the smaller Breakthrough sculpture, it reduces the price by 50%. This is a great outcome expanding the options for collectors of all sizes.

Visit my website for available editions.  www.kerrartworks.com

I just completed the Nebra Sky Sisters sculpture. It is the third and final sculpture in the Nebra series. I’m very excited to be presenting it, as this sculpture entailed an exploration into its rich scientific and cultural history.

The Sordid History of the Nebra Sky Disk

This 3600-year-old Bronze Age artifact captured my imagination and gave me an opportunity to explore the Pleiades star constellation represented on its surface. Recently, a bitter archaeological feud has emerged regarding the accuracy of the age and even the location of its discovery in Germany. Some archaeologists are asserting that it is at least 1000 years younger placing it in the Iron Age. This debate rages on but does not dilute my love for this object nor its importance as an archaeological treasure.

Adding even more intrigue was the way it was discovered. The Nebra hoard (the sky disk, axes, swords, chisels and bracelets) was a plundered treasure.  In 1999, the hoard was unearthed by treasure hunters near Nebra, Germany. Realizing they couldn’t sell these legally, they sold all the items on the black market. The Nebra Sky Disk and the other items were recovered through a sting operation in 2002. The original looters were prosecuted, and the hoard was placed in the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Germany near Nebra. I think this is a movie in the making--starring Tom Hanks and titled The Nebra Sky Watchers. You heard it here.

The symbols on the surface of the Nebra Sky Disk have a story to tell. Archaeologists describe the obvious representations of the sun or full moon and a crescent moon that dominate the disk. The two golden arcs on the sides, that were added later, signify the angles of the solstice and equinox events. It is a calendar. Also added later is the arc at the bottom of the disk thought to represent an Egyptian solar barge moving through the sky. And finally, screaming out to me, was a very clear representation of the Pleiades star constellation.

LDA Sachsen-Anhalt (Photo by Jaraj Liptak)

Halle State Museum of Prehistory, Germany

The Rich Cultural History of the Pleiades and the Seven Sisters

The Pleiades star constellation shows up in many ancient cultures as timekeepers with their appearances in the northern and southern hemispheres signaling the start and end of the farming and seafaring seasons. They emerge in the traditions of the Maori of New Zealand, Australian Aborigines, Chinese, Maya and Aztec cultures. They also emerge in Hindu mythology. The Sioux peoples of North America associate the Pleiades at the Devils Tower in Wyoming with seven females pursued by a bear.

Across all of these cultural traditions and mythologies, the Pleiades are always female entities pursued by male entities--chased through the skies by the likes of Orion, the moon, the Gemini twins, the southern cross and the evening star.

The Greeks represented the seven sisters as the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. These fair nymphs caught the attention of nearby Orion and were pursued by him for years (or perhaps eons). A protective Zeus intervened and turned them into doves, casting them into the sky and immortalizing them as the Seven Sisters.

The Nebra Sky Sisters

A top-down view

I have truly enjoyed all this female energy, the mythology and history. The Greek mythology around these figures allowed me to personify each star into the Seven Sisters: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygete, Celaeno and Alcyone. Very soon, I will be presenting each of the Seven Sisters as individual pieces with their own individual stories.

On a personal note, we have added a new family member to our home…a puppy dog. Every night I go out with our dog to do his dog duty. I gaze up to the sky, find Orion’s belt and follow its line to the faint cluster of stars…The Pleiades. I give thanks that our cosmic paths have crossed.

For more information in The Nebra Sky Sisters and other available pieces, please visit my website www.kerrartworks.com

It came to me in a dream...

The creative spark of the Nebra Disk series came to me in a dream. The dream made no sense to me. I just woke up with an image of the Pleiades star constellation vibrating in my awakening mind.

I pay attention to vibrating dreams.

Within a couple of weeks, I had validation that I would sculpt something around the Pleiades star constellation. From a random book at the bookstore, I discovered the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades appeared on a very early bronze plate called the Nebra Sky Disk, created around 1600 BCE:

This idea manifested itself physically in my art through two pieces: the 3 Nebra Sky Disks and the Nebra Sky Disk and Swords.

Nebra Sky Swords (click on image for story)

Nebra Sky Disks 3

Getting Unstuck

I wanted to complete three pieces in the Nebra Sky Disk series, but the third piece eluded me, and I hadn’t sculpted for months and months. After finishing Breakthrough (the Trojan horse), I secretly was afraid to move forward to the next project. Could I achieve the same level of satisfaction and success as I did with Breakthrough? How would I ever finish the third of the Nebra Series?

I was stuck.

Years ago, I read a book by Elizabeth Gilbert titled Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. In it, she makes an unusual premise about ideas.

"Our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas… They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us… Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest… Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners."

She goes on to say that if a human partner takes too long to manifest an idea in the world, that idea will move to another, more available partner. 

Have you ever possessed a cool idea that you never did anything about only sometime later to come across YOUR IDEA that someone else took and made real? “Hey…that’s MY idea!”

I wondered after a delay of months and months, would the final sculpture of the Nebra Series, namely--the Nebra Sky Sisters--elude me and move to someone else? I’m not driven by fear, but I felt I might miss this opportunity.

And The Women Came…

Fussing and wondering about this third piece, I read another book by the same author—Elizabeth Gilbert—titled The Signature of All Things. 

The heroine, Alma, lived in the mid-late 1800s as a botanist. She traveled to Tahiti to study the flora and stayed in a missionary camp among the native Tahitians, forming close friendships over time. 

During a festival, she was on the sidelines of an athletic event that looked a lot like rugby, played by women on a field that included the beach and ocean. 

There were very few rules. 

She was yanked into this event and found her “best” friend sitting on top of her in five feet of water. Drowning and considering death, "She relaxed even more. She saw a pale light. She felt invited toward something lovely. She felt summoned… Then—in the seconds that remained before it would have been too late to reverse course at all—Alma suddenly knew something… she knew that the world was plainly divided into those who fought an unrelenting battle to live, and those who surrendered and died… It was also true of every living entity on the planet, from the largest creation down to the humblest."

Alma arose out of the water, furious, yelling into the face of her attacker and ready to live her life. 

I shot up in bed, overwhelmed by the power of this simple observation, and cried hard. 

Leaving my bed to discover a beautiful full moon. The gentle, powerful, and female energy of the moonlight was my gift. The ladies had come in, and I was ready to sculpt.

Enter 7 Sisters and Their Story in the Sky

The Pleiades star formation is in the constellation of Taurus. They are visible with the naked eye and set low enough in the sky to appear in both hemispheres. 

For many ancient cultures, the sisters' reign in the sky (May to September in the Northern Hemisphere and from October to April in the Southern Hemisphere) coincided with the start and end of the farming and seafaring seasons.

The Greeks identified the seven sisters as the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. These fair nymphs caught the attention of nearby Orion and were pursued by him for years (or perhaps eons). A protective Zeus intervened and turned them into doves, casting them into the sky and immortalizing them as the Seven Sisters: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygete, Calaeno, and Alcyone.

The Dance of the Nymphs by Edouard Bisson

For the third sculpture in the Nebra series, I interpret the Greek stories around the individual sisters and will sculpt a simple figure for each. I reserve some artistic license to account for the variation in the Greek descriptions of each sister. The Nebra Sky Disk will serve as the platform for the seven sisters as they will be attached to it and oriented in the “shape” of the star constellation.

An early mock-up of the Nebra Sky Sisters in the palm of my hand:

The realized clay version, ready for molding, and then off to the foundry:

I’m excited to manifest this idea of the Nebra Sky Sisters. They taught me the creative spark and process can vary depending on the sculpture. 

Sometimes it is a playful process, just getting into the studio and exploring. Sometimes it is a cerebral process involving research,  calculation, and lots of measuring. And sometimes it is a dream process, dropping an idea in the mind. 

Across each different creative process and source, trust is required.

This sculpture is dedicated to my own sister--Kim Ramsey Meyer.

The Inspiration

The age-old question “Does life imitate art, or does art imitate life?” shows up in my work time and time again. From my work on portraits to hope and strength becoming bronze. Art and life frequently blend together in my creative process. Keeping with the trend, I unveiled a new piece in 2019: a Trojan horse titled Breakthrough.

A year ago, my oncologist Dr. Flaig mentioned that a new cancer treatment that showed great promise in fighting bladder cancer. This treatment (enfortumab vedotin) has gained the nickname "Trojan horse" to describe its mechanism. This exciting news inspired the next natural thought, “I should sculpt this Trojan horse and create it in bronze.”

The Trojan horse metaphor is accurate - the mechanism for this new treatment is astonishing. It includes an antibody that attaches to a very specific site on the cancer cell surface. It also contains a linkage to one or two molecules of a chemo agent. Once attached to the cancer cell, the cell brings it inside (think Trojan horse and getting through the gate) and then the linkage releases the chemo agent inside the cell causing cell death.

Photo courtesy of Seattle Genetics

The Creative Process

I have never sculpted a horse before and I had a blast building this piece!

First Steps

I searched the Internet for images to help me formulate my vision. I found some pretty cool illustrations of Trojan horses, and settled on a Belgian draft breed to give me the shape and conformation I needed to create the armature (the internal structure that supports the clay). Here’s a snippet of those images that informed my vision:

Click image to view video

Second Steps

 Since I was new to sculpting horses, I needed to consult the experts. First, my sister Kim. She brought horses into our lives when we were teenagers. Together, we curried, brushed, braided, and shampooed every square inch of our horses. Complete with cleaning rocks, gravel, and manure out of hooves. I consulted next with Christine Hardy, a professor of equine science at Colorado State University Vet School. She brought a technical knowledge and many more images of horse pieces and parts. She also helped my clay model to evolve from My Favorite Pony to a realistic horse, especially the feet.  

The Challenges

There are always challenges to overcome in the creative process. Whether these challenges are truly obstacles or just speed bumps comes down to your mindset. Speed bumps are common occurrences in any creative endeavor; my armature failed halfway through the sculpting process. This was quickly solved by placing a 2 x 4 board under the belly.

The bulge on the back side of a horse's foot right above the hoof is called the fetlock joint - because this joint is actually very complex, it was difficult to sculpt. When organic questions come into play, it's best to break out the anatomy charts to figure it out - and that's just what I did. The results bring a realism to the piece that eradicate any last visages of My Favorite Pony! I considered this a minor challenge and was grateful that overall this piece went very well. Here’s a time-lapse peek at the sculpting process.

Click image to view video

Blessings

Breakthrough was unveiled in September at the Albert Institute for Bladder Cancer Research Annual Symposium. This event was both a celebration and a catalyst in the breakthrough status of treatments in the fight against bladder cancer. Many of the researchers, scientists, and doctors in attendance at this conference have had direct and successful impact on these breakthroughs and we had a lot to celebrate!

A close look at Breakthrough shows a powerful horse spirit breaking through the armaments of the Trojan horse: the cart, the wood and the metal.

A More Personal Blessing

The immunotherapy I have been on for almost 2 years is starting to fail. I now have a dozen cancerous lymph nodes in my body and it turns out that I really could use enfortumab vedotin as my next option. My other choice would be traditional chemotherapy. The BIG FAT blessing is that enfortumab vedotin was just approved by the FDA in mid-December 2019. I will start my infusions of this amazing treatment in early 2020.

Results

The metaphor I prefer in my journey with fighting cancer is that I am body-surfing. I am using the energy of the wave to thrust me forward. I just stay with it. As the wave is exhausted, I find a new wave and ride it the same way. I feel that I have been doing this with the 2 immunotherapies I’ve been on over the last 6 years. These waves have always been JUST IN TIME and I’ve never been beached.

I feel blessed, spookily inspired, and gifted with the creation of Breakthrough. It’s my strongest piece yet as I navigate sharing the creative interconnections of my life and art.

As an artist, I have difficulty with straight lines.

If I have to create a straight line, I vastly prefer a hand-drawn line that approximates “straight”. No rulers for me.

My life has been a lot like this too. One big, NON-straight line! Multiple careers, an undergraduate degree that I never used, and a graduate degree that took me over 20 years to use.

I played around with sculpting in high school (and loved it), but didn’t sculpt again for 30 years. Here’s a sculpture that I created at age 16:

Converging Lines

Every so often, life's paths come together and converge. If you're lucky, these convergences make beautiful sense. One of my favorite convergences involved Africa and sculpting.

Africa

While living in Minneapolis and newly married, Dave and I both worked for a non-profit organization called Partners in Food Solutions (PFS). The volunteers and partner companies are committed to improving food security, nutrition, and economic development in Africa. Theirs is a mission that reaches across cultural and national boundaries to the essence of being human, and the dignity that caring for fellow humans can evoke. Click the PFS logo to learn more about this amazing organization:

Dave joined as a volunteer and I was hired as a staff member. We loved it and gave it our all.

My position evolved from communication specialist to training manager. This new position utilized the graduate degree I had earned 20 years prior: a master’s degree in cross-cultural communication and training design. I trained volunteers from all over the world and helped to design and implement traditional training programs for food processors in East Africa.

Map of the countries of our focus in East Africa

I befriended a dynamic, wonderful Kenyan woman: Angela. She also lived in Minneapolis and was a volunteer for PFS. Her beauty inspired me.

Art School

Attending a community art school in Minnesota that had a full-service foundry and welding studio (very rare for a community art school), I became a big, fat sponge. I got my hands on all kinds of processes, equipment, and new knowledge.

A new project was imminent as two paths in my life began to converge.

I have always loved doing portraits, especially of other ethnicities, and so I decided to do a portrait sculpture of Angela. Portraits force me to really “see” my subject - not just their physical appearance, their spirit and energy - for accurate representation in clay.

Working with Africans passionate about solving food security issues was both inspiring and humbling. We'd found a great partnership and I wanted to capture it with a sculpture.

Representing the dignity that I saw in the African people I was meeting from Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Ethiopia, this project, through many iterations, became “Dignity”. 

The original portrait in water-based clay

Iterations

It takes a lot of iterations to produce a bronze. For "Dignity", I:

• built a full portrait in water-based clay
• took a mold of the clay
• created a wax version from the mold
• took a partial wax of the mold
• invested it in bronze
• took a mold of the bronze
• scanned the bronze version into a digital file
• printed up a small version of the original portrait, and
• molded that and created small bronze portraits

The result? A portrait of Angela in two bronze sizes: life-size and half-life size.

Click image for a video that captures some of the process

The convergence of big vectors in my life resulted in a simple, elegant and powerful message about dignity.

For other stories, visit my website at kerrartworks.com

Here are the particulars...hope you can make it by either Saturday or Sunday!

Sharing my creative impulses and processes through these stories the last few months has been a wonderful experience.

Now, though, I'd like to give you a peek behind the curtain and show you an actual "how-to" behind my work: mold making. Let's go, Toto!

So you can understand where mold making fits in, here's an overview of the full bronze production process: 

• The artist completes sculpture in clay (positive*)
• A mother mold is made (negative*)
• Wax is poured into the mold, creating a wax pattern (positive)
• The wax is dipped into a ceramic slurry and coated multiple times creating a shell (negative)
• The wax is melted out and hot bronze poured in
• The ceramic shell is broken off revealing the bronze (positive)
• The bronze pieces are cleaned up and welded back together into the final sculpture (really positive!)
• Patina is added to protect the bronze and add dimension and color to the final sculpture

*Special Note: “positive” is the original sculpture shape and “negative” is the inverse shape.

So what is a mother mold?

It is a two-part mold: a rubber/silicon layer and a plaster layer. The rubber layer captures the detail and shape of the original clay sculpture. The plaster layer provides support for the rubber layer to minimize the warping, twisting and buckling of the rubber.

A mother mold can be complex--based upon the sculpture being molded. The monumental sculpture that I did of Joseph Antoine Janis was complex… and BIG (nine feet tall).

In this photo, Big Joe is half-way through the molding process.

He’s been partitioned and the first layer of white rubber applied.

The mold maker had to cut Big Joe up into over 35 pieces that met the size limitations of the foundry.

This is Big Joe in pieces and parts. After casting him in metal, the foundry workers weld Joe back together again.

A good mold maker determines how the molten metal will flow during the casting process. For example, if the mold doesn’t have proper venting--air cannot escape--forming air bubbles that can obstruct the flow of metal. Pieces and parts of the sculpture will then be missing in the finished piece.

In the video below, I used a super simple sculpture to show you how molds are made. A simple disk…the Nebra Sky disk.

Nebra Sky Disks 3

Why are mother molds used in the bronze production process?

I sculpt in oil-based clay with an internal metal armature (an armature is kind of like a shallow skeleton that helps support the weight of the clay). This does not fare well at the foundry.

This is a recent work of mine after the mold was made. I got the original clay back in pieces and parts.

If I want to make multiple copies—an edition—of a sculpture, making a mold is the best way to do it.

Why? The original clay (the positive) tends to get dinged up badly during the molding process as you can see above. As a result, the mold becomes the “original” negative. It's not feasible for an artist to continue to repair the original clay because they'd come out differently each time and the molding process would have to be repeated anyway.

Molds don’t last forever and when the full edition (e.g. 10 nearly identical pieces from the same mold) has been produced, the mold will be destroyed by the artist. This helps to hold the value of the edition for art collectors, because no more identical pieces can be created.

Here are the steps I followed for making a mother mold of the Nebra Sky Disk:

Step 1   Create a clay dam around the disk to contain the silicon rubber in its liquid state.

Step 2   Mix the 2-part silicon rubber components—making a green liquid. Pour 2 layers and give them time to set.

Step 3   Create a second clay dam around the silicon rubber to contain the plaster. Pour the plaster and let it set. This is the mother mold.

Step 4   Remove clay original and place the mother mold on the floor. Since I am pouring hot wax, I keep it low to minimize spattering wax.

Step 5   Pour 190 F wax into the mold creating a wax pattern of the original. Let the wax cool and remove it from the mold.

The knowledge of how to make molds has been invaluable for me as an artist and I've earned the wisdom to know when I need to bring in a professional through lots of trial and error. A good mold maker is worth their weight... in bronze!

To view the video of the process, click the image below.

I tell stories through metal.