| One of the most arcane areas of slip
casting is making the mold. Taking a beautiful masterpiece (well, sometimes...) and
covering it with plaster, hoping that when you wrench it apart you have a working mold.
There are only a few things in life that can give you those chills of worry, those
absolute gut-wrenching dreams. Waking up in a cold sweat, having dreamed that you forgot
to soap the mold, is only akin to those looking-for-a-toilet dreams for me.
I poured my first plaster mold on the nose-picker pin. For those of you who don't know about this little gem, we were selling at the Renaissance Faire and had been making resin pins. I sculpted, with Kristina's help, a very complacent face picking its nose. We also did headache, tongue-sticker, and shouter, but those came later. Nose-picker was a classic, an instant hit. Not among the model horse people, really, who knew a waste of clay when they saw one. Among the neighborhood kids, who appreciated this sort of humor. Actually, considering the rarity of this "early Pour Horse" piece, someone trawling our little neighborhood in twenty years may find themselves a treasure or two. And a few stares of disbelief from the neighbors. The nose-picker mold was open backed, so you poured the slip into the piece and then kept re-topping it until you had a solid casting. This very wasteful and indifferent way of making a casting was the best I could do at the time. I also used an enormous amount of plaster, I never have been able to judge volume! But it is still functional after all these years, and the molds that came after showed the progress I made. Laurilyn Burson showed me the light, the Way of Mold Making. The Process of Plaster. The Rightness of Rubber. She showed me how to really visualize the parting lines, and the way each piece needed to come away. New worlds opened up, like Aladdin's Cave. Rich Steckman, moldmaker to H-R at San Marcos, and previously moldmaker to Freelin McFarlane, was a very interesting man. He told us about dipping a dead mouse in slip until it was covered, and then firing it to achieve a perfect (and perfectly useless) shell mold of the mouse. Something tells me that being in the room with the firing kiln that day was not very pleasant. Or, likely, for some time to come. Besides, who wants a mold of a dead mouse? Is that what happens when moldmakers are bored? What a scary thought! I must try to keep veeeeery busy, so that I don't begin to eye the squirrel population with a gleam in my eye. (Shudder) Adalee is taking a moldmaking class at Long Beach State, and she had to make this really amazing goblet. At least, I think it's a goblet. But I sure wouldn't want to try to drink out of it. It was covered with "findings" of old buttons, shells, and heaven knows what else. Her teacher told her not to take the undercuts out of it, they make it more "organic". Organic is right. It would be like drinking out of a sea anemone. But her teacher is a typical moldmaker, sorry to say. He only sees the ability to reproduce multiples, the endless fascination with form and shape. He doesn't see that without function, form and shape are not really marketable. That's why he teaches, instead of fending off three hundred rabid collectors. (Just a personal moment there, sorry...) When Mark from Alchemy came over to visit the first time, his pressing question was how I can make a mold in which the casting comes out in one piece. My question to him was why he would chop everything up into little bits. Seemed such a waste of time. This great mystery, for both of us, was cleared up when I cast a Suspiro (I think it was, or maybe an Okie...) and when I pulled the legs away slightly from the body to remove that mold piece, the light bulb went on for him. **We can tweak with earthenware, pull it out of shape slightly, then move it back!!!** Oh my gosh. They can't DO that with bone china. Every piece has to be cast just right, no moving it, nothing can be stressed when removing it. No WONDER he chops everything up! You can't imagine the relief all around! It was really good to know that a) neither one of us had been doing it wrong all of the time and b) the other person wasn't some kind of nut. Moldmaking is a very rewarding but very stressful sideline. No, if you mess up no one dies. Well, not yet anyway, but perhaps if you ruin a really important original sculpture... Anyway, no one usually dies. At worst, you have to eat dirt and apologize. But it is one of those crafts that give rise to rather unusual thought processes, and shine a very twisted light on the world around you. So you might want to keep away from the rodents. Joanie |
