Posts by admin

The Grambling State University Tiger has been installed by Bridgette Mongeon. It has been a long process. The process is documented in this blog with the category Grambling Tiger or the artist has kept a project blog for the client. You can find it at http://gramblingtiger.blogspot.com/

On December 2nd the Tiger left NM to be driven on an open bed semi to Grambling, Louisiana,  and Bridgette Mongeon, the artist, left Houston on that Tuesday to meet the tiger.

A long drive later, early on the morning of Wed the 4th the artist and tiger are united once again. Now for the installation.

The patina is the coloring of the tiger.  The color is created by using chemicals and heat.  It is a very dark cold and long day/evening when we figure out the patina. Once we decide on the color it will take several days to complete the patina.

Once the Grambling Tiger sculpture is sandblasted, I must check it out to be sure that there are not corrections. I walk around the sculpture or in this case, climb around the sculpture looking for places for them to fix. I mark them with a marker and then the foundry men work their magic.  I have a very intimate relationship with this height and this tiger head. 

The foundry works diligently to meet the deadline.  Each of the many pieces of metal must be welded together seamlessly.  Once the cat is almost finished, it is moved from one side of the foundry to the other.

I’m headed to the foundry in New Mexico very soon to monitor the rest of the progress and to do the final coloring of the Grambling State tiger.  Then we will load it up on the flat bed and watch for it to arrive on campus.  Not sure how much posting I’ll be able to do while there. You will get glimmers of the sculpture in the snap shots that I take. Not until the great reveal will you be able to see the entire sculpture complete. Unless… you are in NM on November 16th. I’ll be giving a lecture on “Taming the beast” at Shidoni Foundry.  The lecture will culminate with watching a bronze pour. (Not the tiger as it will be complete.) We will also be able to take a look at the finished tiger.  I can hardly wait.

I’d be happy to repeat this lecture at Grambling for those who are interested.  Looks like we are leaning toward delivery of the sculpture in the first week of December.

The rocks in this Grambling State tiger sculpture are just as massive as the tiger itself.  The many, many pieces of the sculpture are being welded together. The foundry will match my sculpted textures. It is a huge puzzle to figure out where everything goes. There will also be an internal structure inside the sculpture to give it support. 

In the post we saw some the process of pouring the head of the tiger.  Now that the head is poured, the ceramic shell must be broken off of the metal. This is called divesting. I asked the foundry to take a movie of this part. It looks brutal, but it is important.  If you watch the entire thing be sure to look at the how they also much take the shell of the inside the sculpture.

The second part of this video shows them taking the metal spurs off of the sculpture. I especially like the look of this video. Seeing the light from the torch shine through the holes in the sculpture.

Now, this piece will need to be sandblasted to get all of the ceramic shell off of the metal.