Commissions

 This is a sculpture of my granddaughter, Erin, at 7 years of age. She is now 16 years and is competing at  Australian National Women's Gymnastics at level 8. How time flies!!!

"I Can Do That" Bronze and Stainless Steel 207cm .

 Her last competition at Nationals saw her team from Tea Tree Gully, SA compete and come 3rd Team overall and she achieved achieved third place individually.

I have just been through the motions of costing the above sculpture to be hired as an artwork for a public place to add interest to the area for a 6 month duration.

I really wasn't sure what the normal charges would be but found help through NAVA (National Association for the Visual Arts, Australia) who have a series of booklets  that give fees and other advise. I rang them as I am a member and they were very helpful over the phone. I also took advise from Arts SA who were also helpful.

I also needed the sculpture to be sound and Martin Murray , an engineer from George Street Studios, is able to make the sculpture more public friendly and would be able to install the piece if needed.

It was amazing just how much time was needed to complete this exercise  but at least I keep learning about procedures and what needs to be done before a quote can be written. There is some cost to the artist (hiring an engineer for work involved)  and looking at General Property Insurance for the sculpture but I was amazed how costs added up as I initially did not look at everything involved.

Another exercise is sending sculptures off to cities around the country and also sending unfired clay sculptures to an interstate foundry.  These are usually around the 70 kg mark  so they require care and manpower to lift them.

 I have just sent a Mary MacKillop CC bronze  bust to St Gertrude's Primary School at Smithfield NSW. They will build a reflective garden with the bust as the centrepiece of the garden.


I am finding it rather hard to blog about my practice of late as there have been commissions which require me not to disclose the work until it is installed and with large bronze work this often means that the work will not be completed for 8 to 12 months.

I have 2 such commissions at the moment. The first one is now at the foundry so I can focus on my new one.

I usually take from 2 to 4 months to model the work in clay and then the foundry work requires another 4 months to complete the work.

Commissions usually take several months before they are signed up and ready to go.
Often they begin with an expression of interest and a visit to my studio to see current work.

There are discussions on what the client is proposing and work then often takes the form of research,  the historical content and reading of contemporary accounts , especially when there are no photos available. Paintings are also a source of information and I am so happy to have the internet for research as it would take many, many more hours to research at the library.

Because of this, I do not post often.

I have however seen some wonderful sculptors from sites such as   www.figurativeartists.org
I saw this site on facebook and have visited it often.

Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Gawler Commission.

I was approached last year to sculpt a St Paul for a lovely old Federation Catholic Church in Gawler, South Australia. The town itself is one of the earliest towns after free settlers came to South Australia to live and there is many fine old examples of early cottages and business buildings in the area.

The church itself was built around 1900 and is predominately red brick and features four niches across the front of the church and were probably meant to house statues of the saints.

After researching the history and clothing and symbols for the saint, I began work on a half life size
saint in clay.
I had a large job as a sculptor for two war figures for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander War Memorial which was to begin soon but I was waiting on the go ahead for this job which had been held up, so I took on this smaller job whilst I was waiting for the larger job to go ahead.

The niches were rather tall but shallow and were fancily shaped with cut brick.

The figure needed to be raised as the space was too tall for the figure so wood was added under the feet for height.

I decided to change the book for a scroll denoting letters. St Paul is dressed as a traveller with a cloak.

Details of the feet,

head, sandals and sword.

TUT foundry came to the studio and wrapped the soft clay sculpture to transport it back to their foundry where they would proceed with the mouldmaking , waxes and the lost wax method of producing a bronze.

St Paul in bronze, coloured at the foundry

Preparation for installation

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Installed in the niche

Michael with his generous gift to the church, myself and Tim from TUT Foundry

The blessing on St Peter and Paul Feast Day, 29th June 2013

Thick fog going home after the service

Back to Work

Paradise Harbour Antarctica.

This is the first post in almost a year. So much has happened since I last wrote.

Above is a painting I worked on last year and then continued on painting again this year as I wasn't entirely satisfied with the results. I have also painted a further two smaller paintings of the same iceberg from a different angle and showed them at the Saint Ignatius Art Show last weekend.

This is really the first lot of work shown since last year.

I must say that the commission of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Soldiers Memorial was not carried through and I reluctantly decided against continuing with the job. Many of the problems stemmed from having someone else make my armatures and after a month's work they were still as much a problem that my best solution was to not continue with the  work.

Several week's later whilst driving home a car ran a red light and hit my car.The car was totalled and I ended up being taken by ambulance to hospital with both wrists injured and bruising to my chest, knees and arms and neck. My right wrist had been fractured in two places .Just as well I did not have  a major commission on my plate to complete.

A week later my husband had a major cardiac arrest whilst driving me home in his car.
We went through a roundabout and damaged the car.I pulled the wheel to the side of the road and found my husband to be unconcious and not breathing.With help from local people and ringing emergency service, my husband was resuscitated and given defribrulation and rushed to Adelaide hospital where we had a tense twelve days in ICU.

He finally came home from the hospital several days before Christmas and began a long recovery.
My youngest brother also died after Christmas from cancer which was unexpected. We had hoped
he would have had a slightly longer time to live.

So here I am beginning work again and trying to sort our lives out again.
Hopefully I will relate some of the new work I am now doing.
Hope you will join me with some of my new posts.