'Big Boy' in Sculpture Review article, Fall 2011 issue

The National Sculpture Society's quarterly magazine heads off with an article on 'Humor in sculpture', which includes your's truly's Big Boy...

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And since Big Boy's in the spotlight, here's another pic or two of the grumpy fellow from my files...

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Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

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'Creatures' show at Sisko Gallery in Seattle

If you're in Seattle between July 14th and August 21st pop into Sisko Gallery for this year's 'Creatures' show!

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Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

 

 

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Peter Wright's batcave and the art of crating bronze sculptures.

Recently I paid another visit to Peter Wright's batcave.
He's the man who offered to take on the risk of casting some of my larger pieces in exchange for half of what's left when they find homes after the gallery cut and casting costs are subtracted.
For which I am, of course, extremely grateful.
He's also a fine glass artist in his own right (no pun intended!). I love the colors he uses in his pieces. For me they are quite exquisite. (click HERE to see his work).

And he has a secret bat-cave, which is where you're seeing him here!

That big crate has got my Sumo Wrestling Toads in it.
I've never seen Peter in a cape, but he can appear and disappear very quickly, and he's always talking by phone from some far flung part of the country or other, so I keep wondering just how he does it...

We're sending Sumo Toads to the Natural History Museum in San Diego (for the Society of Animal Artists 50th annual show) and another pair to Grand Rapids, Michigan (for ArtPrize), along with Big Boy, and some other toads.

The Sumo's are crated, with cross bars inside to keep them from wobbling around. Some kind of plasticky rigid foam is glued to the crates, and the cross bars, and other sheets of it are wedged in here and there.
Everything is marked and coded with numbers and letters so anyone who un-packs it, can later re-pack it exactly the same. The cross bars are screwed in from the outside of the crate.

Big Boy is put in a double thickness corrugated cardboard box, with slabs of softer foam that's more squashy. Each is numbered with a hole in it, so when they're all stacked together horizontally Big Boy nestles cocooned inside his new world of soft foam.
Super thick heavy rope handles round out the procedure.
This is how Peter sends his glass as well. It would take a pretty determined person with a fork-lift to do any damage to it (oh no, I haven't just jinxed it have I?).
Of course everything's also insured, just in case...

My Bumper to Bumper is part of the National Sculpture Society's 77th annual exhibition in Brookgreen Gardens, SC.
Since the base is granite great care is needed for the packing process.
The wooden crate has a foam lining, and sides which slot into place allowing no movement.

The foam top locks it all into place, and the lid is screwed on.

Again, everything is very carefully marked and coded so anyone can re-pack it correctly later.

Besides that, here's a table full of recently patinated bits and pieces which will all hopefully be enjoying life in their new homes very soon (if they aren't already!). Looks like it's almost time for a new tin of paste wax (for brushing on the bronzes while they're freshly hot from the patina process).

As you can see I indulged in a little beer towel thievery during my student years. How could I resist, after all, it had my name written all over it!
I think this one came from my local in Portreath, Cornwall at the time, the Waterfront Inn.

Oh, and don't forget of course, the end of this month is the DEADLINE for entering my latest win-a-mouse contest (click HERE).

Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

Sumo wrestling toads will fight it out at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan

ArtPrize is in its second year.
With over $450,000 in prize money up for grabs it's the biggest art contest I know of, the public decides the winner, and it would be rude not to have a bash!
There's over 1,700 artists entered this year!

Here's a photoshop scramble to show what my piece might look like...

Here's how ArtPrize works...
It's very interestingly run.
Artists sign up to the website with their proposed idea (not necessarily finished).
Venues sign up, announcing they'd like to host some art.
Artists and venues approach each other, and when they'd like to team up, sign a contract.
When a registered artist signs up with a registered venue, you're officially entered!
Any type of venue can take part from museums to tatoo parlors, as can any type of artist (with or without tatoos).
The public sees the art on display all around the city and they vote for their favorites.

There will also be some additional prizes awarded by sponsors instead of voted on by the public, but the $450,000 put up by the organizer is divided up between the top ten winners, publicly voted on, with a top prize of $250,000!

My entry...
My Sumo Wrestling Toads form the centerpiece of my entry, called 'Amphibian Struggle'.
You can see my public profile on the ArtPrize website by clicking HERE.
There'll be a video looping near the bronzes, which includes over 100 cartoon frogs I drew on my iPhone with the brushes app, amongst other things.

It's an expensive proposition- casting, crating and sending bronzes around, so luckily I was able to enlist the help of Peter Wright.
He has been responsible for assuming the financial burden of some of my larger, usually more esoteric pieces.
Once the sculpting is finished, he takes them from my sculpting table to the foundry, and on through the production cycle in exchange for a share of the profits.

I can safely say I wouldn't have enjoyed such an immediate and thorough immersion into the sculpture community had I not been lucky enough to partner up with Peter very early on.
So lucky for me he's paying for the costs incurred to enter, and so if I win any prize money, he's getting half the winnings! There'd be a slight variation if I won first prize...

My pledge...
If I win the $250,000 first prize, since my theme is the struggle amphibians face to survive, I'll be donating $50,000 off the top to Amphibian Ark. Peter and I will have to make do with half each of what's left!
Amphibian Ark are an organization dedicated to saving as many species of amphibians from extinction as possible.
Amphibians are currently facing more threats than they can handle, and while plenty of species have us to thank for their impending doom, ironically we are also their best and only hope for survival.

And that's what Amphibian Ark are dedicated to doing, by providing captive breeding programs for species who can't currently survive in the wild, until whatever threat facing them passes.

$50,000 is their estimated cost to save a single species, so I'll give them that much to throw my lot in with others working to save the yellow legged frog of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

So if you're in Grand Rapids, Michigan, between Sept 23 and Oct 10, why not pop on over to the public museum and check out my entry.
By all means vote for it too, if you'd like!



Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

Making of 'Big boy', my large Cane Toad sculpture

I thought I'd post a blow by blow series of pictures of Big Boy, my large Cane Toad bronze.
I started out by obtaining a live toad to keep as a model for a while, and I made some smaller toads before doing the large one.

I only had him for a few months, but he was such a greedy fellow, he went from 4" to 6" long in that short space of time, which volume wise could be nearly three times his mass. I wish I'd weighed him.




I made a very sturdy internal structure from foam, wood, metal brackets and the like, over which I smushed liquified (heated in a crock pot) clay. I was using an oil based plastilene which contains sulphur, now I use a wax based clay without sulphur. You get less complaints of bad smells that way! I made his back feet the final size based on measurements, which looked really wierd, but I trusted in my measurements and went ahead fleshing out more of him.

Visitors to the house wondered if I was making some kind of strange haloween decoration.
I wanted to finish the base and the feet early so that when all his huge fatness started to get in the way I wouldn't be struggling to make toes in inaccessible places or anything.
The temporary ping pong balls for eyes were a nice touch I thought.
Still a very long way to go mind you.
Working from my fine live model, who was changing in shape as he gained weight daily it seemed, I continued adding and adding, until he got pretty heavy.

I was pretty glad I'd made such a sturdy armature at this point, since the last thing I wanted was a collapse on the way to the foundry after all that work.

Lots more belly, and lots of warts along with some facial features were needed. His belly just kept eating up blocks of clay with alarming speed. I started to wonder if the kitchen table might break under the strain!

Since, like me, cane toads love to eat I picked a pose which is typical of cane toads when they are looking at something tasty. They can sit blob like all day long, but they perk right up at the sight of some food.
If Big boy and young Sprightly mouse (seen in the pic down there) were not made of bronze but real creatures, I wouldn't be fancying Sprightly's chances very much if they were ever to meet like this!


In case you were wondering, I fed my toad a mixed diet of jumbo mealworms, crickets, some locust sized grasshoppers and enormous caterpillars which you grow up to size in pots that you buy them in from the pet store.

The enormous shapes behind his head are poison sacks, full of bufotoxins.
Some people lick them to get high.
The lethal poison is one reason why in Australia, where they were introduced to control the sugar cane beetle, they have instead been wiping out indigenous species and taking over the northern end of the country. Anything they can fit in their mouths they eat (they'll even try ping pong balls if they see them moving!), and anything that gets a mouthful of that poison will die. So there's no opportunity for species to learn to avoid them, they just get wiped out.

I have heard that crows have figured out to flip them over and attack the belly side, but I could not personally verify this since I don't live in Australia, and have never seen it done.
Mind you, they also live in Florida and Texas too (as well as Hawaii, the Philippines and South and Central America). I don't know why they don't run as rampant there. But Australians do have a bit of a history of introducing things to the peril of the country, starting I suppose with themselves, depending on your point of view.
Well, back to the toad in question.
Since being cast (he weighs in at about 60lbs in bronze) I have had the good fortune of having a pair of them purchased by Loveland High Plains Arts Council in Colorado, to be installed in their famous Benson Sculpture Park in the summer of 2008, which makes me very happy indeed. They'll be sitting troll-like guarding one side of a bridge which crosses the pond in the park, and they'll be in some quite distinguished company. In addition to that, private collectors of course have bought some, so it shouldn't be too long before the edition of 15 is sold out.
My sculpture website (click on this line).