I know a man who donated a very large sculptural composition of three rams to Colorado State University (CSU…their sports teams are the Rams) in Fort Collins for installation in the new brand new football stadium, specifically in the new alumni center in the stadium. His company provided the pre-cast concrete for construction of the new stadium.
Problem was, the sculptor, a Denver native who worked in the 1980s, had built a lava rock (really? there is no lava rock in Colorado, but okay) base for his sculpture, which needed replacing, especially since most of it fell apart when the sculpture group was removed from its present location. Here’s it is pre-taking-down…this thing is TWELVE feet wide!:
So I said, “Hey, I model rock scenery all the time for my model railroad, take a look at this.” And I showed him some scenes from my railroad layout; here’s one for example:
So I showed them my work, and presented them with a proposal, including a drawing, and they commissioned me to build a base for the sculpture to replace the lava rock, and the theme would be rock you would see in the mountains around CSU. Here’s the alumni center (where the sculpture will be installed) under construction and here’s my “NAPKIN” drawing!
And the sketch of my concept (which, of course, I hardly followed at all!):
Once I got the commission, I cleared space on a wall in my gallery, right out in the gallery itself, and temporarily installed the armature for the sculpture and the rams once the lava rock had been removed (this project at this point finally hit home to me how gigantic in scale it is, oh boy):
I bought six sheets of four-foot by eight-foot rigid insulation, the yellowish kind with the paper and foil backing on both sides, and it’s two inches thick, to make the rock structure. It’s this stuff:
And then I formed it into the rock ledges and painted it. The whole thing hangs on the structure by dowels, and, after having failed miserably to get sheets and pieces to hang together with various adhesives, including the insta-grab caulking, I went back to my layout modelling techniques and use pointed skewers from the grocery store to hold the various pieces and layers together. it worked so I ain’t knocking it! And caulked all over the place the joints that needed smoothing out.
Here you can see the skewers, the caulking, and the dowels that will be cut off and filled in the final installation (the colors I used are white from a painter’s gesso, raw umber, and yellow ochre, nothing else):
I did the carving and scraping and shaping with one knife I bought from the hardware store, and I don’t know what it’s usually used for but it worked for me. Here’s where I am at with this project right now, and I have to finish it this weekend because we are installing at CSU on Monday. I’ll add some pictures here as I go along. I won’t be getting any sleep for the next couple of days.
Thanks for looking; I hope this is of some interest to someone. If nothing else, it’s a case of railroad modelling paying off in an unexpected way.
