Tuesday 24th June, Update on sculptures' progress

I heard news from Sean at Fundere Fine Art Foundrythat they have begun to lay the wax for Mary and the two children will follow soon.
I will travel to Melbourne to refine the waxes in the second week of the school holidays, as we are looking after our grandaughters over the first week.
It will probably be Tuesday, 15th July. I will work on the waxes till I am happy with themand can then hand them over to the foundry to complete the processes.
The tentative date for installation is 27th October this year.
Meanwhile I have work for a joint exhibition to be done so I need to get this work underway.
All the clay has been removed from the sculpture now bar the top of Mary,So I need to pug this clay as it has been slaking for a week now.
Will write up more news as it happens, photos are being maddingly difficult to put on the blog but I am persevering and should get some more up soon.
Judy.

Reclaiming clay

After Sean and Chris loaded up their van, they had a shower and breakfast at our place and then left to drive back to Melbourne, Victoria.
I went to the workshop and began to reclaim the clay from Jimmy to wet down for repugging.
I kept the face, although cut in two pieces and with dented forehead and wrapped it up to look at it later.
I wrapped the two remaining sculptures and spent Monday doing the same to Maggie. As her head had been removed during the demoulding process, I have her head wrapped also to look at later.
As I had to meet Bill Kay, the architect, in the city to discuss the plinth, I didn't get much of Mary reclaimed and probably won't get all the clay off today either as there is a lot of it, so I had better get working.

Moulds complete and at foundry in Melbourne

I have'nt had time to update until now. Thursday was a busy day and Friday was no different for the two men from the foundry. While Chris was applying RTV rubber, Sean was applying felt strips to a second layer of rubber so that it bonded to the rubber.
While that was being done, Chris and Sean swapped jobs and Sean began to apply Resin to the felt and backed it with two layers of fibreglass matting.
They trimmed the moulds and drilled holes for locking the moulds together.
This took most of Friday and Saturday.
By 5:00 pm Saturday, they were ready to take the moulds from the sculpture. Luckily Pam from the workshop, was on hand to take some photos of the demoulding before the the light faded. I had been at the workshop to supply breakfast and cut up some more fibreglass matting, but went to see a gymnastic competition that my youngest grandaughter was competing in, on the other side of Adelaide, at Marion. (She placed 2nd, over all apparatus and received a silver medal for also placing 2nd, in uneven bars, so we were very excited for her.)
The boys from the foundry were very pleased with the moulds. Early Sunday they came to our place for a cooked breakfast and a shower, before an 8 hour journey back to Melbourne, with smelly moulds in the back of the van.
Thanks to all the visitors and girls from the workshops who looked in on the work being carried out by the foundry. I'm sure they can now appreciate what a lot of work has to be done to get sculpture moulds to the foundry, and yet there is still such a lot of work to be done before it becomes a bronze sculpture in Mary MacKillop Place.

Work continues on the moulds

It's now Friday and the mouldmaking team of Sean and Chris from Fundere Fine Art Foundry have been hard at it for the third day now. They completed the first coat of RTV rubber Thursday morning and started adding a second layer of rubber to the back of this first layer, colouring the second layer and laying felt into the sticky second layer of rubber.
The third layer is resin is worked into the back of the felt after the rubber layer has cured.
Fiberglass sheeting is laid into this resin and they apply two coats to make a good 3 layer mould.
The team is working hard and I have been there each day to get them breakfast and fetched them a meal at lunchtime today. I have also assisted with cutting up various sized felt strips and fibreglass strips to help them while they work on the sculpture.
The weather has been threatening to rain a few times, so the work gets shifted indoors now and then, but goes back out in the open air for them to work on.
The boys were sleeping on the floor with a bit of carpet under them the first night, but Shaun my son, loaned them a swag and a camp bed for them so they had a more comfortable night, last night.
last night for sleeping.
The area next to our workshops belongs to the Golden Grove Football Club, and they have been doing a lot of earthworks, and the area across from us are developing a new housing area, so there are a lot of heavy trucks rumbling around the vicinity, so the boys are getting an early wake up call each day starting with the corellas in the gums at 5:30am.

First layer of RTV rubber applied today

Mould making commenced today with Sean and Chris starting the day at 8.ooam working on sectioning the whole sculpture into areas with aluminium shims and then beginning to lay the first RTV layer onto the figures.
I also did a bit of RTV layering on the girl's figure which we named Maggie.
The boy was also named Jimmy.
I left Sean at 6.30pm to go home and they were going to continue through the evening working on the first layer.
Many thanks for the great lunch the workshop members made for the boys working.
I just hope their decision to camp overnight at the workshop in sleeping bags will be ok for them as it will be very cold overnight.

Sculpture modelling complete

I have finally finished all the modelling now and have signed the work.
I now have to wait for Fundere Foundry to travel to Adelaide on Tuesday and they will commence the mould making and will probably finish it by the weekend and take it back to the foundry at Footscray, Melbourne.
The architect and Paul from the Archdiocese came out today and checked the dimensions against the planned foundations and are very pleased with the sculpture.
Everything has been finished on time on time and the foundry now have 4 months to do their work .
It will bebe positioned in Mary Mackillop Place which is being landscaped as garden and open space, beside the Adelaide Cathedral , overlooking Victoria Square.
John will take photographs for me on Saturday, so there will be new photographs on my site next week.

Mould Making next week

Final week before foundry makes the moulds and I am making small adjustments to the modelling and generally cleaning up any dags on the surface of the modelling. The foundry will arrive next Tuesday and begin to make the moulds Wednesday, so it will be pretty exciting next week.