Bronze
30 x 30 x 30 cm.
May 2012 - Feb. 2014
This is the final piece of a project which I developed during the year I stayed in Sweden as an erasmus. The project theme was identity: what makes a person different? what makes each person special? what is an identity made of? why do we have the need to be so unique, yet so integrated in a group? what do we use to define our identity? this are some of the questions that define the proyect.
This is the last sculpture I've made up until now, and was the end of my to erasmus and my art studies. It's a self-identity, a piece meant to represent my identity.
Reaching this point was really difficult, I tried to achieveit for months. I found quite hard to summarize my identity in a single image/piece. When I started looking at my own identity, I found out that there was so much I should represent, so many different things, aspects of my life, that I didn't know how I should start...First I tried to think about it out of the blue, but that only lead me to think about my personality and my relation with society, leaving out some important things. Then I decided to change my strategy, and tried to think about it by parts, but that didn't help much either. Anyway, that set me on the right way, as I started learning things about myself. I finally started writting everything down, giving it shape, and listing all the different aspects of my identity...with all that learnt and in my mind, I ended up creating this design
It works as a whole thing, everything is conected and moving, flowing...I feel this piece represents everything that I am right now at this point of my life, I feel identified with it.
To make this piece I had to go back to Spain, the installations here in Sweden were too small to make this.
The process of bronze casting a piece like this is quite long, first of all, I had to make a plaster cast of a ball, then in two pieces, make with it the two sides of the ball with wax, as it's empty on the inside, I had to do it aplying thin layers of wax. Once I had the teo sides of the wax ball, with a hot iron I started making the different holes on it, and refining the borders.
Once the ball was ready on itself, I had to add a lot of wax pipes which will be used later to let the molten bronze in, I also had to add some air exits. When the pipes are ready, the whole wax piece goes inside a block of plaster mixed with brick powder, and when it has dried, it's placed inside a hoven. Then, all the wax melts and goes away, leaving a block which has inside the shape the piece and the pipes had.
That leads to the video, the block is placed in sand, because if something goes gronw it could explode, then, with the bronze molten at 1200 Cº, we pour it inside the pipes, as the video shows, I also worked on this, the first two blocks contain this piece. When the bronze has cooled down, the plaster block is destroyed, and if everything goes well (which is not so common), the piece is almost finished, there is only left removing the pipes, as the first two pictures show, and then polishing it
I think it's quite funny, how this piece, which is about my own identity, is the project where I recieved most help in my artistic life, I had the colaboration of several teachers and lots of friends in order to finish it and be able to bring it to Sweden on time...I believe, that this process and how I was helped really suits the piece.
Back in Sweden, I polished both outside and inside the sphere, but I realized that polishing the wholes was really hard as the only way was using small rasps, so the piece made it to the art exhibition unfinished. It took me another year and a half to completely finish it, as I was busy with design and VFX courses.
 |
 |