Sculptors

Great artists like Michelangelo immediately saw a captive Madonna in a block of marble and with a hammer and chisel it was only a matter of ten thousand hammer beats to free the beautiful lady. Professional knowledge, a strong constitution and patience are of course a requirement for this. Gone is gone and a well-rounded goddess does not want you to become an anorexic patient. Today you can achieve computer-driven, lifeless perfection.

Artist Evert van Hemert explains how a bronze statue is created

In this article, let’s only focus on the everlasting durable “expensive” bronze. Each bronze statue is made of wax, plaster or clay. These materials can take any conceivable shape, the advantage of wax is that you do not have to cover it, but beware of the sun; clay dries out and needs constant attention and plaster gives a lot of mess.

If multiple copies of a sculpture are desired, a silicone mold is made around the original. This mold is a rubber mold consisting of two or more parts with inside the “mother model” and outside a plaster or plastic support mold that can be divided so that the original image can be removed. When the statue is removed, the mold is closed again and then filled with special casting wax. This wax is allowed to solidify for a while until the right thickness is reached on the outside. The excess wax is poured out.

What remains is a hollow wax model, which can now be updated and equipped with air and pouring channels. This wax model is provided with a solid fire mass inside and outside in the foundry, interconnected by core irons, after which the wax is fired. Liquid bronze (1200 degrees) is poured into the empty space where the wax has been.

Once cooled, the sculpture is cut out and ready for further processing. The artwork now has the appearance of a forgotten and sprouted potato. Then we start to widen everything superfluous and weld any loose parts together, close the holes of the core irons and cast galleries and then grind away the casting skin, so that the ‘original’ image is visible again.

Cast and finished bronze is gold colored, but the oxidation in the outdoor air makes it black, green, gray. To speed up that process and keep it in your own hands, the image is patinated. With the help of a gas burner and various chemicals, the image is, as it were, colored, in the desired patina – a laborious and unhealthy process. Finally, the sculpture is provided with a layer of beeswax to fix the patina.