Southewestern Art, May 1980
by Morgan Catherine Merrill		 Page 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8  

Title


Lincoln Fox
HOPI SNAKE PRIEST bronze, h 24 Courtesy of Moulton Galleries, Ft. Smith, Arkansas




Gratefully, my years of training have allowed me to forget about the basics and become involved with the spirit of what I want to create. I often look up and see that it is morning already. The actual creative process is very fast, and tremendously enjoyable for me. It flows naturally. I often finish eighty or ninety percent of the sculpture in the first sitting. The last percent, while also creative, is more deliberate and intellectual and may take weeks or months to complete.

When the creative process is finished and the sculpture is in front of me, I then, for the first time, realize the impact of what has happened. Not only can I see what I've been trying to say, but I realize that, in its completeness, the sculpture no longer depends on me for its life. I must admit I'm rather mystified by its total independence! Only in spirit and mind can we ever be one again.

MCM: Since the scale of your work varies from inches to over life size, do you have to adapt your technical process with the size change?

LF: When working on a small scale of up to about twenty inches, I love to work directly in wax. I don't like the effect that "hot tooling" gives, so I cut wax in small pieces, place them in a pan of warm water to soften and begin modeling. Because I don't start with an armature when working in this fashion, I have the greatest freedom to take advantage of lovely accidents, strokes of genius and human bumblings. The general shape and form take place very quickly. The spontaneity and mood is created at this stage; not with detail but by quality and proportion of form. So, by the time I have the general mass and volume created, I know the mood or charisma the piece will have. Once I feel satisfied with the work at this stage, I think for the first time about an armature. Yes, this is backward from traditional methods, but it gives me complete freedom of design. To give the piece its internal support, I build an armature bent to correspond with the piece; cut open a channel in the wax and lay the armature inside. It is an easy matter to replace the channel wax and smooth the form back to its original state.

When I work on a larger scale, life size for example, my procedure changes. Because of the tremendous weight and mass that must be supported, I'm forced to build an armature first. Armatures for life size pieces are constructed from one-inch construction rods, heavy armature wire, hardwood and chains. This skeletal structure is anchored with bolts to a stout carriage on wheels. It is not unusual for the original to weigh between 500 and 1,000 pounds. This weight must be supported from a few months to over a year, depending on when I finish it. It would be most embarrassing to work on a piece for a year or so and come in one morning and find it collapsed on the floor.