Richard Hathaway

I have to admit that since I have finished writing my black book Dick Hathaway is receiving a lot of attention. I am down in the studio until late at night usually leaving around 11:30. My apprentice comes in at 9 and stays until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Then I take over. It feels good to have Dick’s hands and feet all attached. Still need to do a lot of detail but now that I have him all together it is much easier to see things. Here are some photograph that my husband took for press purposes. The sculpture goes through its completion from the feet upward. Notice there are no ties on the shoe laces. The foundry fabricates these in metal. I work my way up the socks to the pant legs. The fold in the pants and the hands will take a tremendous amount of time. Once I work my way up the entire torso I will take off the head and work the details separately from the torso.

When the sculpture is cast in metal the entire thing will shrink about an inch, making Dick appear a bit smaller.

While at the campus last October I was taking pictures of things that were Dick Hathaway. I have a blog about my adventures in undergraduate and graduate school, if anyone is interested.

Here is his mailbox, with incoming mail.
and the phone in his office with 12 messages.

I have been focusing on Dick Hathaway’s sneakers. I took his right sneaker off and replaced it with a Folgers can for the time being. I love working on shoes. Florencia has been helping and in the studio just about every day. I am so thankful for her assistance. I don’t know how I would be able to finish the project on time. Though until we have further funding for casting I have no real deadline. I just want to be able to show the completed sculpting for my graduation scheduled for November 1, 2006.

I miss working on Dick but find that I need to work on the proportions alone. My brain goes so fast and I jump around so much that I need the focus and concentration. At night is a good time to work. But I have yet to really get back to the torso. I did put on the left hand; at least I began to rough it in. I hesitate in putting pictures of it on the web because I don’t know if others can see the finished product, but then that is what process writing is all about. Strange now that the hand is on he feels more alive, more talkative. The previous photo that I took of myself, where Dick appeared in the background proved that.

A rod attaches the hand. You can see the rod sticking out of Dick’s hand. If you remember the entire arm has rebar in it. So I stuck this rod through his hand and then pounded it into the arm. Quickly adding wax and clay between the two to secure the hand. I hate to get in the studio in the morning to find that the hand is fallen off.

The rebar in the arm causes me some concern. I wish I could reposition it a bit, but instead I try to manipulate the foam and rubber around it to bring his elbow in and down a bit.

This entire left side of Dick has been difficult because of not having good reference photographs but now that I have them it should move along quickly, if I could find the time to get downstairs to the studio.

I seem to be overcome with this black book writing. I am writing the final pages today and hope to get the rest of it off to the proofreader this weekend. My it is a great deal of work. I get down into the studio to work on Dick in the evenings. It was interesting that when this picture was taken I thought, “Hmmm looks like a never ending lecture from Dick Hathaway.” I like working downstairs in the evenings, I can turn the TV on and put myself in a different position than sitting in front of the screen working on the black book all day long. I can hardly believe this final semester is coming to an end.

It has been a while since the last Dick Hathaway post. I have been busy doing my writing for graduation. Still not done, but Dick was getting lonely down in the studio and my new apprentice Florencia was anxious to get going. So I have taken a break today to get back to Dick Hathaway. I sat down with Dick and had a chat, he understood perfectly. Getting my work done for residency is a priority.

Have I said how much I jump around while working on a sculpture? I think it made Florencia a bit nervous. Add a bit here and then work on this section, and yet there are section of Dick that have not been touched and in those cases I force myself not to look at them until I need to or until they affect something else that I am working on. When there are no more spots to jumps around to, I know I will be finished.

While working on Dick’s arms I began to notice that he wore a watch. Opposite wrist as mine, he wore his on his right wrist. I wondered what type of watch Dick Hathaway would have, would it be a Mickey Mouse watch, or would he be more formal? I also wondered how he felt about time. Are there any hathawayisms concerning time?

Hathawayisms provided with permission from Tom Slayton

        It was that amazing combination of brilliant wit, deep learning, and blather,  that would turn a cymbidium orchid into what he called, “An iris that’s gone Episcopalian,” a bottle of ginseng tablets into “a placebo for intellectuals,” a plastic case for Star Wars figures as “a post-industrial fantasy item,”

“It is my job to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Hathawayism provided by Linda G

(Picture is a jar from Dick’s office)

Hathawayism
“My body is just something I use to carry around my head.”

A comment Dick used concerning exercise

I hope I have that hathawayism correct

I have not been back to work on the sculpture of Dick in over a week, instead I am writing about the process of finding Dick Hathaway and sculpting the deceased. Hopefully Dick and I will be reunited in a week or so. Until then I thought it appropriate to post a picture or two of our beloved friend and professor. Hey Dick, what’s cooking?