By MIKE YOUDS
Daily News Staff Reporter
Never confuse an absent artist with an idle one.
Geert Maas was the last of four commissioned sculptors to
set to work in
Kamloops during the Okanagan Thompson International Sculpture
Symposium,
but he was the first to get started on his contribution.
Working with Maas's preferred medium, bronze, an alloy of
copper and tin,
is an exacting, costly and time-consuming art that employs techniques
dating back 7,000 years. For those reasons, much of the work
had to be done
in advance, off-site in Kelowna.
"I started last year with the maquette," Maas explained
while completing
the work behind Cunliffe House in Riverside Park recently. A
maquette is a
preliminary scale model or sketch.
"I started on the sculpture on April 5, six weeks ahead
of everyone else."
The foundry work alone took 21/2 months, he notes.
The work, entitled Community In Motion, now stands about three
metres high,
completed and covered, next to Cunliffe Gallery, ready for its
final
installation at the main entrance to Riverside Park.
This, Maas says, is his finest work.
"This is a tremendous piece," says the Kelowna-based
artist. "I've done
500, maybe 1,000 sculptures in my life, so I think I can judge
by
experience."
Community In Motion is intended to encapsulate the spirit
of Kamloops, the
collective will to move forward as a community.
"The idea is that this is almost like a group of people
in a striding mode
and there is always some change going on. The wave patterns will
have a
different colour, a different patina."
The same method Maas has used to create Community in Motion
were used by
tribesmen in Africa 5,000 years before Christ. Examples of this
ancient
work can be seen in New York's Metropolitan Museum, Maas notes.
It is
called the lost wax method and to understand the degree of labour
involved,
consider how it works.
1. Create sketches and models, often in three-dimensional
clay.
2. Build a scale model: "The maquette is the most important
stage," Maas says.
3. Determine the scale of the finished work using as many
measurements and
reference points as possible.
3. Construct a full-sized wooden frame, called an aperture.
4. Model a positive clay image over this frame. This is the
original work
of art.
5. Make a negative plaster-mold image in sections around this
clay image.
"This took about 1,000 pounds of clay," Maas says.
"That's a lot of
rolling."
Is it ready for the bronze?
"That would be too easy," Maas replies.
6. Molten wax is poured into the mold to form layers of wax.
This was model
is an exact duplicate of the original work.
7. Chasing the wax: The wax is pulled from the mold and hand
"chased" or
re-detailed by the artist. This reproduces the original but each
piece will
be slightly different from the next.
8. Spruing: Wax rods and a pouring cup are attached to the
wax casting in
precise positions that will allow a full pour.
9. Casting the ceramic mold: In a temperature-controlled climate,
the wax
casting is dipped into an "investment liquid." On the
first dip a fine
powder is applied. On the next dip a course ceramic sand is applied.
This
step is repeated several times, each on increasing the coarseness
of the
material to crate the ceramic mold. The mold has to cure before
every
successive dipping.
10. Burn-out: The ceramic shell is placed in a kiln and fired.
The shell
bakes and the wax is melted (lost) from the shell. This creates
a hollow
ceramic shell mold.
11. Casting: The ceramic shell is removed from the kiln and
immediately the
molten bronze is poured into the shell at a temperature of 1,150
C.
12. Break-out: After the casting has cooled several hours,
the shell is
carefully broken away, leaving the unfinished bronze.
That's it - for the initial stages of creating the bronze.
It is followed
by sandblasting, assembly, detailing, glass-beading, polish,
patina and
final waxing to add lustre to the patina.
Voila, Community in Motion, a year in the making, is ready
to be installed.
Engineer Andrew Wilson designed the pedestal while Timeless Development's
Mike Ferber has constructed it and BA Blacktop provided the concrete.
Maas, who emigrated to Canada from Holland in 1965, has been
sculpting in
bronze for more than 20 years.
"It was pretty hard getting started," he says. "It
took a few years before
I sold my first work."
Maas, who learned his art at the Academy of Art in The Hague,
knew that
making a living from bronze sculpture in the Interior of B.C.
would be
difficult, so he went about creating his own sculpture park.
The Geert Maas
Sculpture Gardens, Gallery & Studio, located at 250 Reynolds
Rd. in
Kelowna, contains 350 bronze works.
With this legacy behind him, Maas knows of what he speaks.
"So I think this is a very challenging piece. Every time
someone walks
around it they will see something new. Once people have gained
an
understanding of what it stands for, I think they will appreciate
it more."
They ought to appreciate the price. The sculpture is worth
an estimated
$80,000 to $88,000, while the four commissioned sculptors working
in
Kamloops are being paid $40,000 apiece. The symposium, obviously,
is much
more than a job for Maas.
"As an artist you are intrigued by having your work exposed
to the public.
You want people to see it.
"And the thought that this is out there forever - 7,000
years - puts a lot
of pressure on the artist."
By MIKE YOUDS
Daily News Staff Reporter
Though he speaks little English, Percy Zorrilla Soto expresses
volumes in a
universal language.
The young Peruvian sculptor, one of four commissioned sculptors
creating
public works of art in Kamloops during this summer's International
Sculpture Symposium, works with steel and symbolism.
For much of the past month Soto has been toiling away at Drago's
Spring and
Welding on River Street. Due to the materials and equipment required,
he
has had to work off-site, so his art has so far not had the public
exposure
of others.
With the aid of translator Elizabeth Flores, however, he was
able to offer
a preview of the work that will have a permanent place on a grassy
knoll
between Riverside and Pioneer parks.
It is a geometric design - an arrangement of crescent-like
shapes that are
distinct yet interconnected - he will call Creacion, Spanish
for creation.
"He likes the relationship between the negative and the
positive, the mass
and the form," Flores interpreted.
As with other geometric art forms, meaning can be drawn both
from the space
that it occupies and the space that it does not.
"When he looks at this sculpture, he's interested in
the empty, inside
space within the sculpture," Flores continued. "Each
geometric shape
expresses something different."
It must be viewed from every angle, Soto stressed.
Creacion began as a square, symbolizing humanity, but when
rendered as a
diagonal shape, it represents human activity. The expanded middle
of the
sculpture represents man's intrusion into the world. The number
three, a
recurring theme in Soto's work, invokes the divinity, a representation
of
the Trinity - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - a connection
between the mortal and the metaphysical. Or, as Flores translated,
"the
spiritual here and now."
"Man has an external, an internal and a spiritual world.
He's trying to
express the spirituality of man in this world."
Creacion is fabricated from a special high-quality metal called
Corten,
donated by Wilkinson Steel. The surface of the metal will be
oxidized with
acid, making it appear red, but this will not affect its long-term
structural integrity, Soto said.
The rust bears its own meaning - the passage of time and the
stamp it
leaves on humanity. Red, too, is an important colour for Soto.
To him it
represents the religious aspect of divine love, the rituals of
fire and
sacrifice, prominent in South America's ancient past.
Spirituality figures prominently in the work of Soto, who
studied art and
first took up metal sculpting as a student at the Catholic University
of
Peru in Lima. He began sculpting professionally just seven years
ago and
already has commissioned works in Germany, Spain and Russia.
Since 1996,
geometrics have been his sole focus.
The public, of course, is free to interpret at will.
"One thing is the message the artist wants to give to
the world," Flores
translated. "Maybe that's not the role of the symposium,
but for him,
artistically, that what he wants to show to the world."
Soto has been staying with local artists Gisela and Donovan
Harrison during
the symposium while his wife and two children remain at home
in Lima. His
wife has had some complications with her pregnancy, so she could
not
accompany him here.
"He likes the landscape. It's very calm and he finds
the tranquility to
create. The silence is important."
As is the expression it allows.