Newsboy-The Meeting

Sculptor Bridgette Mongeon has documented the entire process of creating a figurine of a newsboy and a life-size bronze sculpture. Watch the artist work through these posts. In this blog, she has also included information for students and teachers. In the previous post, we learned how I pick a pose.

If you are lost and want to go back to the chronological running list of posts, follow this link.

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Getting Ready for the Meeting
The photos are in the album, the contract is ready, and I have picked up the studio enough to be able to walk around without getting clay stuck to your shoes. I am ready for my meeting with the committee members from the Texas Press.

Visiting the Studio
Mr. Hodges and Ms. Garner Cash spent some time at the studio looking around and then we used the opportunity to shoot some photos. I explained the bronze process by showing them Ellie, a sculpture of a little girl. The first bronze was placed at the cemetery on Washington Avenue in Houston, Texas. The second one is intended for St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. After sculpting Ellie, a mold was made of her and then a wax poured in that mold. The wax is hollow and the same thickness that the bronze will be. This ‘lost wax method’ is one that we will be recording here with the sculpture of the newsboy. Oftentimes the sculpture is cut into different pieces to facilitate the foundry process.

Did he Break it?
Yes, it looks like Mr. Hodges broke Ellie, but real, she is all right.

Lunch and a Review of the Pose!
After the studio, we proceeded to my favorite neighborhood restaurant, Peco’s, to discuss the schedule, the contract, and most importantly to look at the photos of Dusty. Each of us had our favorite photos and we all raised our hands at different times emulating the pose and the raising of the newspaper trying to get a feel for it. In fact we did it so often I think the waitresses, thinking that we were calling them, began to ignore us entirely.

And the Finalist is…
While everyone was eating I pulled all of the photos that were finalists together onto one page. There were about 5. After a careful look at those, it was unanimous. With a little modification to the feet of one pose, we had our newsboy!

“Meeting you, visiting your studio, seeing examples of your artistry heightened my excitement about working with you on this project. It was solid affirmation that TPA made the right choice of a sculptor for our anniversary project. Bridgette’s style perfectly captures the innocence and vitality we hope to portray with our ‘newsboy’ statue.”

Wanda Garner Cash,
President, Texas Press Association

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STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

Art and History
The lost wax method of sculpting is very old. We will get to see the documentation of the lost wax method of casting with the newsboy sculpture, however you can read a little more about it under the sculpture process link at the top of this page. There is a bit of information about the history of lost wax on other web sites as well. Following this link will lead you to an animated guide to bronze casting.

Later you will see that as the work progresses, chemistry will also become a part of the artistic process.
Vocabulary
A person who works in the lost wax method and in metal is called a metallurgist.

Let’s move onto the next steps in this process- Beginning the Small Sculpture.