Saturday, November 21, 2009

New Miniature of Mary MacKillop ready for sale.

Thank goodness the hot weather is over for the moment. On Thursday, the temperature reached 43degrees c which is the hottest November day ever recorded. Usually we have nice weather with a few warm days leading up to Christmas and then the hot weather is normal in January, February and March in South Australia. To have extreme hot weather at the beginning of Summer is maybe a warning of things to come?
I am sitting at the computer writing this with the window openand cool air coming in and this is soo welcome, and there has been very light rain but only enough to wet the pavement, so I hope it will rain a little heavier soon.
I left for Melbourne very early on Tuesday and was picked up by Sean and taken to Fundere Foundry where they are casting the miniatures of Mary Mac to be sold as an edition.
There were a few minor things to be corrected, then we coloured the bronzes as the original had been coloured, although the colouring is very very subtle. Three artist proofs have been produced and stamped accordingly, one for the church to have as a piece for buyers to see, the second is mine and the third one is for the foundry to use as check against future casts so that they have a standard piece to go by. They also had the base boards stained ready for the bronzes.
The next dayI was able to see the Ricky Swallow exhibition at Federation Square which was wonderful to actually see the pieces in person. I then caught a tram out to the foundry and we waxed the pieces and let them dry and finally boxed them up for me to take the two sculptures back to Adelaide.
Each sculpture weighs 10 kg so to handle the transportation we boxed the two together and I had that as my luggage and my hand luggage included a bronze Seated dancer that the foundry also cast for me which weighed 7kg, so I was heavily weighed down for my return flight home.
The meeting with the church included a visit by the Archbiship, who was pleased with the minature.
There will be a viewing of the minature sculpture on Wednesday 2nd December 2009 for interested buyers. Please contact Jane Juniper at Catholic Communications on 08 8210 8117 or email jjuniper@adelaide.catholic.org.au

Thursday, November 12, 2009
















The new floor to the studio was finished on Tuesday and it looks good. I really felt for the 4 men cementing as the temperature has been HOT . There were three Italians over 60 and a young labourer to help them. It was stinking hot but they lugged barrow loads of concrete from the front drive to the back and had the job finially finished by 1.oopm and they were then off to set up the next job for the next day up in the Adelaide hills.






I was amazed at their stamina and their good humour on such a hot day.






The weather here has been 39c and over and it is expected to last until Monday when it will return back to the mid 20'sc. The studio looks great with the new floor in but we will not see a resumption of the internal walls till late next week, so I am again disappointed at the delays.






I will be going over to Melbourne on Tuesday and Wednesday to the foundry to finish the patina on the minature artist proofs and will bring them back to Adelaide with me.






There has been orders for 2 so far and a third waiting to see the the finished piece.






It's good to see a few orders come in.

Thursday, November 5, 2009