New Approaches to Sculptural Casting

Event Center A & B

The focus of this research was to learn two specific approaches of casting sculptural objects to later apply to my artistic practice. For the first part of my research, I learned the process of utilizing low-fire bismuth alloy to create a three-dimensional form. Brushable silicone was applied to a clay form that was later poured into, resulting in a metal object. The attraction to this type of metal casting is the accessibility-it can be melted simply using a standard stove top. The second portion of my research was to conduct a series of compatibility testing with different brands of glass casting material. To approach this, I fabricated a series of small objects utilizing glasses of different expansions rates and colors. These forms, which took the shape of flies, were dropped into separate square-shaped plaster-silica molds containing the standard glass we use at CSUSB. Molten material was immediately dropped on top, encasing the original colored fly. Upon cooling, I observed the resulting objects to see which had cracked (indicating incompatibility) and/or greatly distorted the original object (not preferable for artwork). The findings and knowledge obtained from both of these casting methods were then applied to my sculptural artwork.