Grandiose Posturing by Richard Arfsten
Grandiose Posturing - maquette. Grandiose Posturing is my impression of a male bird showing off to attract lady birds. I think it would be a great piece for a bird sanctuary, a night club or a restaurant.
The maquette was made using the evaporative pattern casting process. Another name for the process is lost foam. It is a simple concept but extremely hard to achieve success. Essentially you bury a piece of foam in sand and pour molten metal into it. You always get something -- but not necessarily what you want.
There are basically two ways to pack the sand around the foam pattern. The first way is to physically put the sand around the pattern and compact it with some device. This works well for very large castings that will be machine surfaced or can be left in a relatively low tolerance state. These sand types have to have the ability to pack. Some have chemicals that harden the sand. The other way is to rain or pour sand over the pattern and vibrate it to compact it. This is like hour glass sand that is dry and moves easily. This is OK for large strong patterns.
I work with very fragile patterns so I cannot drop sand on it or pack it. I basically pour sand next to the pattern and let it settle next to the pattern. You have to work with the angle of repose -- that is the angle of a sand pile. If you are not very careful the sand acts like a mini mud slide and distorts the pattern. It is very hard to get the sand to compact on the irregular surfaces on the bottom surfaces of the design. If you vibrate too long the sand actually twists the pattern.
I started playing with this process 25 years ago when it was a very new process and there were no books on the subject. In the beginning I would only have a successful pour about 10% of the time. Now I am about 60% successful. It took me 5 years and 150 pours to identify the 50 variables and begin to get some control of the process. When you are not successful you lose all the time it took you to make and design the pattern. Because the learning curve is so long and success so remote you only see this process used in industry for very long runs of 100,000 items or more. This is also why other artists do not use this process very much. The pieces made from this process are solid, not hollow like other castings. For this reason I cast mostly in aluminum so I can lift the finished piece!
The foundry I used to create my maquettes has now closed so there is will be no more opportunities for me to make new designs. I developed a whole line of special equipment to work around the problems of my process and I have never found another foundry that would cast my work.
Other artists have this concept that they want every pour to work perfectly. The foundry wants a sure thing procedure so they get paid for their effort. The artist does not want to waste all his time developing the design and see it go up in smoke, literally. This is why I have to pour my own work. No one else will contract to make my castings.
Maquette size: 17"H x 15"W x 8"D
The price shown is for the maquette only. The rights to enlarge the piece are available, but are NOT included in the sale price of the maquette. In order to enlarge the piece, the buyer enters into a contract with me and a fabricator of their choosing, and assumes financial responsibility for all enlargement and installation costs. I would be paid an additional design fee, based on a percentage of the total cost of the enlargement (similar to the practice used by architects). Please contact me for further information regarding enlargement.
The maquette was made using the evaporative pattern casting process. Another name for the process is lost foam. It is a simple concept but extremely hard to achieve success. Essentially you bury a piece of foam in sand and pour molten metal into it. You always get something -- but not necessarily what you want.
There are basically two ways to pack the sand around the foam pattern. The first way is to physically put the sand around the pattern and compact it with some device. This works well for very large castings that will be machine surfaced or can be left in a relatively low tolerance state. These sand types have to have the ability to pack. Some have chemicals that harden the sand. The other way is to rain or pour sand over the pattern and vibrate it to compact it. This is like hour glass sand that is dry and moves easily. This is OK for large strong patterns.
I work with very fragile patterns so I cannot drop sand on it or pack it. I basically pour sand next to the pattern and let it settle next to the pattern. You have to work with the angle of repose -- that is the angle of a sand pile. If you are not very careful the sand acts like a mini mud slide and distorts the pattern. It is very hard to get the sand to compact on the irregular surfaces on the bottom surfaces of the design. If you vibrate too long the sand actually twists the pattern.
I started playing with this process 25 years ago when it was a very new process and there were no books on the subject. In the beginning I would only have a successful pour about 10% of the time. Now I am about 60% successful. It took me 5 years and 150 pours to identify the 50 variables and begin to get some control of the process. When you are not successful you lose all the time it took you to make and design the pattern. Because the learning curve is so long and success so remote you only see this process used in industry for very long runs of 100,000 items or more. This is also why other artists do not use this process very much. The pieces made from this process are solid, not hollow like other castings. For this reason I cast mostly in aluminum so I can lift the finished piece!
The foundry I used to create my maquettes has now closed so there is will be no more opportunities for me to make new designs. I developed a whole line of special equipment to work around the problems of my process and I have never found another foundry that would cast my work.
Other artists have this concept that they want every pour to work perfectly. The foundry wants a sure thing procedure so they get paid for their effort. The artist does not want to waste all his time developing the design and see it go up in smoke, literally. This is why I have to pour my own work. No one else will contract to make my castings.
Maquette size: 17"H x 15"W x 8"D
The price shown is for the maquette only. The rights to enlarge the piece are available, but are NOT included in the sale price of the maquette. In order to enlarge the piece, the buyer enters into a contract with me and a fabricator of their choosing, and assumes financial responsibility for all enlargement and installation costs. I would be paid an additional design fee, based on a percentage of the total cost of the enlargement (similar to the practice used by architects). Please contact me for further information regarding enlargement.