Art Concrete

Concrete and Fashion

2011-09-26T17:47:00.000-07:00

Airi Isoda likes to pull architectural influences into her fashion designs. Using materials commonly found in the construction industry, such as Tyvek and industrial-grade felt, she designs minimalist clothing. And yes, there is concrete in her work, such as this necklace of beads. Isoda has a degree in architecture and works in both Los Angeles and Tokyo.

cotton silk shirting / silk charmeuse / concrete

(all images used with permission)

But more surprising is her use of fabric dipped in concrete. To give the fabric flexibility, the concrete surface is intentionally broken. I have seen fabric dipped in concrete before, for sculptural purposes – but not for clothes that could actually be worn.

felted wool / silk charmeuse lining / cotton / concrete

concrete dip shift dress + polka dot romper

Isoda is part of wrk-shp, a multi-disciplinary design collective working in the fields of architecture and fashion.

This work shows off one of concrete's greatest strengths: its ability to remain neutral, to be simply a functional material. It is down-to-earth, and without pretension. And yet it can be used as a metaphor for "material" and encourage the viewer to think about what material means.

Concrete Beads

2011-09-14T11:12:00.000-07:00

Often, tools and materials determine a design. I stumbled across this silicone pad in our local hardware store -- a hot plate for pots in the kitchen. It was pale blue and very flexible, divided into open squares of about 5 mm, each hole about 2 mm deep. Silicone is a great mold-making material for concrete, so I bought it not knowing at the time what I would do with it.

5 mm squares after they are released from the silicone mold

First, I was thinking the texture would look great pressed into the surface of a larger concrete sculpture, but then I thought of beads, lots of beads. I sprayed the surface of the pad with a release agent, then mixed up a fairly fine mix of Portland cement and stone dust (1:1), with 10% metakaolin, a bit of black dye and some PVA fibers. This was spread over the surface of the mold, then packed with a small rod into the square spaces, smoothed off, and covered in plastic sheet for a few days. When I pulled the concrete out of the mold, the fibers held most of the squares together, so I used a utility knife to slice them apart. The squares were then immersed in water for about a week.

After the week was up and the concrete was probably 90% cured, I drilled each bead with a .9 mm (.035") metal drill. I drilled from both sides to try and keep the hole centered. The next step was to wet-sand all the surfaces by hand, using a 400 grit sandpaper. This gave a smooth surface to the beads and also got rid of all the surface fibers. To round off the edges (rather than hand sanding such tiny shapes) I tumbled them with steel shot for an hour. When they came out of the tumbler, this is what they looked like among the steel shot:

Tiny square concrete beads in steel shot

The plan is to use these concrete beads in some minimal jewellery designs, such as the partly completed earrings below.

Draft earring design, sterling, titanium, concrete

Isaac Cordal's little concrete people

2011-05-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Isaac Cordal makes little people out of concrete and them places them in thought-provoking situations in various cities and countries in Europe. You can find them in the street, sitting on rooftops, precariously balanced on a pipe, standing up to their waists in water with a life preserver, or standing in the snow. The figures are made in clay, then a silicone mold is made in which the concrete is cast. Some of the figures are painted some left grey.

Some of Cordal's work is mechanized, but I particularly like the small quiet figures.

Street Art London also has an excellent interview with Cordal along with other photographs of his work. A new book has also just been published about Cordal's work called Cement Eclipses, available from Carpet Bombing Culture.

Pillar of Shame

2011-01-26T12:57:00.000-08:00

Wikemedia Commons

This concrete statue, the Pillar of Shame, is in Hong Kong, and commemorates the 50 people who died in Tienanmen Square in Beijing in the government crackdown of 1989. The inscription reads "The old cannot kill the young forever." In 2008 it was painted orange to raise awareness about human rights in China.

This website has links to a number sites with more information and photographs.

http://www.aidoh.dk/?categoryID=62

The sculpture, by Danish artist Jens Galschiot depicts torn and twisted bodies. Galschiot was not allowed in to Hong Kong when it was painted orange but approved of the transformation.

http://regnirts.blogspot.com/2008/04/hong-kong-pillar-of-shame.html

Concrete Sculpture Finished

2010-07-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well, it took me two weeks to finish off the sculpture that I showed last time on this blog. It took several thin layers of cement on top of what I showed June 14, one of them dyed with a brick-coloured pigment, as you can see from this image. The two parts rest against each other and form a tripod as a base.

Leaning, concrete sculpture, 2010

I toned down the stripes quite a bit from the last images; they seemed to detract too much from the forms. One thing you can't see are six-inch rods coming out of the base of the forms. They are embedded in the grass for additional support. I set the bolts in the concrete by drilling then filling the holes with a concrete epoxy, the kind used in the construction industry for setting lag bolts into foundation walls.

The sculpture is now in the Artful Garden exhibition at Jon and Suzann Partridge's studio in Muskoka, Ontario.
http://www.theartfulgarden.ca/

More on the Concrete Sculpture

2010-06-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

I took some photographs of the recent concrete sculpture I have been working on. The structure (armature) is steel rebar with steel mesh wrapped around that. The sculpture is in two parts that will be resting on each other, separate but together, in the final piece.

My original idea was black and white stripes on the branch-like forms, but I toned down the really strong contrast. The first photo shows the thin black-pigmented cement after being applied. I used masking tape to keep the smooth mixture in the right places. When the cement had cured enough (about 24 hours) I peeled off the tape and wet sanded the piece. Then I scratched grooves in the surface with very coarse sandpaper (16 grit) and an old file, followed by an application of a thin layer of white Portland cement and metakaolin that covered everything. The next photo shows the application of that thin white layer.

You can see the scratches made in the black in the photo. The white smooth mix is rubbed into those grooves so that when most of the white is sanded off, the lines would show as white. After I did this I then did the revese colour process—scratching that surface again, but this time rubbing a thin black layer over everything. After this cures I will wet sand it off with something like a 320 grit paper to reveal (hopefully) a very complex and interesting surface.

In the meantime both pieces of the sculpture are wrapped in plastic to allow them to damp cure.

Sketches for a Sculpture

2010-06-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a concrete sculpture for a couple of weeks now. My ideas started with some very brief sketches with the idea of dependency and relationship. I like the idea of one object leaning on another one so that they are both in a sense holding each other up. I have also been thinking about the number of projects I had been working on all at the same time, and debating internally whether that was a bad thing ("to do anything well you have to do only one thing without distraction") or a good thing ("creativity comes out of chaos").

The first images in my sketchbook were simple line drawings, and then I tested some of those ideas by bending the forms in copper wire, to see how gravity and geometry would work with those ideas. Then I made two separate armatures out of steel rebar and expanded steel mesh (stucco lath), then made a mixture of cement, sand and polystyrene beads which I pushed into and through the lath. I used this lightweight mixture because the pieces are about six feet long, and I wanted to be able to lift them. Over a period of several days I applied thinner layers of white Portland cement mixed with white sand onto the surface of the growing shapes. That's about where I am now, applying thinner and smoother layers of alternating bands of white cement and black pigmented cement as final finishes.

This morning I found a scrap of paper on which I had written some notes and done a couple of little sketches. It was about half-way through the design process, so I thought I would scan it and share it. I also seem to have resolved the conflict about working on many things at once. I had written "creativity is something your brain does when you're working on something else", then edited it to "creativity is something your brain does when you're thinking of something else." This must have been influenced by the Zen directive in brush painting: "It is not I that am doing this." Under that I wrote: "That's my excuse for doing so many things at once."

I'll post some pictures soon of the sculpture as it develops. At the same time I am continuing to make and market jewellery, and I am also trying to tie up a project I started a few months ago which is neither concrete-related or jewellery-related.

Concrete Statue at Denver Airport

2010-06-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

A seven ton 26 foot concrete statue of Anubis, Egyptian god of death and the afterlife, is being installed at Denver International Airport. The statue will be there for the duration of a King Tut show, June 9, 2010 to January 9, 2011. (The King Tut show closed at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto in May. The statue appears to be the same one used outside the AGO.) According to 9news.com, the jackal-headed statue will weigh in at 9000 pounds, and is being assembled in sections.

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=140192&catid=339

The statue appears be controversial on a couple of levels. A statue of the god of death in an airport might make some superstitious passengers nervous, and the American end-of-days movement is concerned about the growing number of "pagan statues" being erected.

I for one don't mind the idea of a god of death (pagan or otherwise) overlooking an airport. I confront my own mortality every time I fly, so why shouldn't everyone else be reminded of theirs? The end of days argument is that we are putting up idols against the wishes of a jealous god. "After all of God's warnings we just have got to tempt fate," they say. Surely we all recognize that this is a Egyptian god from a long-dead religion. Or do these people believe that art is even more powerful than I imagined.

Concrete Survey, Part 2

2010-05-11T19:54:00.000-07:00

These are the last half of the results of the concrete as an art material survey I did last week.

In question 4, we asked about concrete's main strengths. Low cost was the most popular choice, with appearance and durability coming in close behind.

Concrete's main weakness was seen as its weight — and by a wide margin. I had put "weight" as a choice in the survey in both both strengths and weaknesses questions, so it was no surprise that weight was the least popular in the strengths section. The public's perception of concrete as cheap building material put it as the second biggest weakness of concrete. Permeability to moisture and susceptibility to frost were tied for third place as weaknesses.

There were lots of comments for both these questions.

"It is what it is," wrote one person.
Someone else asked: "By 'shock value' I assume you mean you can make it look like another medium?! Yes, I love it when I hear observers look questioningly as if to ask: what IS this material..." No, actually I meant shock value in that we think of it often as a building material but it can still be beautiful in its own right. I don't actually want my concrete to look like something else. I might paint it bright red, but you would still know it was painted concrete. "It is what it is." In the "strengths" question, I should have put a choice that said: "Quiet presence."
Someone else commented: "People are strange in their perceptions of value, they can be put off by the use of concrete through thinking of it as "cheap" instead of recognising the skill it takes to transform a pile of sand and minerals into a work of art."
"Any weaknesses are a reflection of the artist, not the material."

Which sculptural medium appears to be the most valuable to you? That was the last question in the survey. Bronze 36%. Concrete and stone, both 26%. Steel and wood, a distant fifth and sixth place. People seemed reluctant to answer this last question, judging by some of the comments:

"The medium is not the source of the value. Rather the value comes from the artist's vision and skill expressed through content."
"Each has it's own life and are equally valuable."
"I don't value one over the other, they all have strengths and weaknesses."
"Purely because of the cost of using it as a medium."
"Hard question...any medium that the artist has pushed to the limit. I like to be surprised by what was done with any medium where the envelope has been pushed."

Thanks to everyone who participated in this survey.

Concrete Survey, Part 1

2010-05-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

It's time for a report back on the ArtConcrete non-scientific survey, now that responses have slowed. This is how it breaks down for the first three questions.

83% of the respondents have actually made something artistic out of concrete (question 3), so this is obviously not a general-public sort of survey, but more a survey from those who know the material. People reported they made mostly sculptures, along with lots of other functional objects like bowls, birdbaths and even furniture and jewelry.

Speaking of jewelry (question 2), 66% said they thought concrete was an appropriate material for making jewelry. 6% said "no", and 29% said "maybe." Maybe? Surely this is a black and white issue. There were lots of interesting comments here:

"Wonder a bit about the long term wearability of concrete jewelry and how it holds up to skin oils, perfume, etc."
"Stretch the boundaries, why not."
"I am a jewelery maker who works in metals but cannot wait to try concrete... just a little scared about dropping it."
"I would have to see, touch, experience the piece, to decide fully whether it was what I would consider wearable art."
"Art is alchemy."
"If comfortable and more refined than a lot of outdoor sculpture."
"In small scale other materials may work better. However, depends on the artist and what effect you're looking for."
"I've made some cast concrete (really heavy) large scale 'martyr' necklaces (completely unwearable, but funny)..."

Overall (question 1), 97% agreed concrete was an appropriate material for art, with only 3% saying maybe. Nobody said "not appropriate." About a third of the respondents added comments to this question, and some of them were really good:

"Any material - or non-material - is appropriate for art."
"Just look at how gorgeous Rachel Whiteread's sculptures are. The surface and the way it ages are beautiful." (Whiteread is the British sculptor who filled the inside of a house - about to be demolished - with concrete, then took the building away, exposing the volume of the spaces inside.)
"Beats pickled shark." Where did that come from?
"Have been experimenting with papercrete (recycled/shredded paper, concrete and bit of clay) working through head issues such as, is this a legitimate art material. Like the lighter weight, green reuse/recycle aspects."
"I love the fast results from Wet Concrete carving. I have also worked with armature and hve enjoyed that also."
"As a casting, laying-up, and carving material, it has superior qualities."
"I consider concrete appropriate material for art works as long as it's durable. Sometimes, I'm astounded by the beauty of concrete used in everyday, construction purposes. The other day... I came upon some very old concrete footings in the woods, probably to hold up a bridge... I guess I consider "appropriate" a bit of an understatement! It can be most desirous, in my mind."
"Emphatically yes. Ideal for the artist that has plenty of inspiration and little cash."
"Strong, cheap and convenient. Downsides are weight, lack of detail."
"Absolutely the most versatile medium going!"

I couldn't agree more. Those are the responses to the first three questions in the survey. I'll summarize the final three in the next blog post.

Art Concrete Survey

2010-05-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

I have posted a survey about concrete as an art medium on Survey Monkey. It's nothing very scientific, but the results should be interesting. There are only six multiple choice questions, and room for comments if you want to leave them. I'll post the results back on this blog (and in Google Group's Art Concrete email discussion list) after a week or so.

1. Do you consider concrete an appropriate material for art works?

Maybe

Yes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KDMBX28

Book Review: Concrete Crafts, Alan Wycheck

2010-04-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

Concrete Crafts: Making Modern Accessories for the Home and Garden is a new book about creating simple concrete objects. The subtitle: Making Modern Accessories for the Home and Garden pretty well summarizes what the book is trying to do.

Briefly, the book covers such items as pavers, tiles, tabletops, stepping stones, planters and bowls, all in a a step-by-step format using clear colour photographs. This is a really useful way to learn; you feel like you have stepped into the author's own backyard and watched him make the pieces. The instructions are simple and straight forward, nothing fancy here. If you haven't made wooden forms with plywood and lumber, the book shows you how. The strength of the book is that if you are a complete beginner in concrete craft it gives you enough information and confidence to start. If you wanted to make some simple production molds for geometrically based production work there is also some good information. And there is good precautionary safety advice about wearing gloves, dust masks and protective glasses when necessary.

But don't look for much creative inspiration, advanced techniques or mixes here. The shapes and forms that Wycheck uses are in keeping with an introductory book. If you've been making concrete garden accessories or sculptures for some time, there's not much you can learn. (Although I did learn that two-part polyester makes a great wood sealer for forms that you want to use repeatedly, and I was reminded that vegetable oil makes a good non-toxic release agent.) My summary of the book is that it is useful for beginners, not so useful for experienced concrete artists.

Concrete Crafts: Making Modern Accessories for the Home and Garden
Alan Wycheck
Stackpole Books, 2010, 155 pp

Concrete Arc Table

2010-04-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.otto-otto.com/2009/09/eye-candy-arc-table-by-foster-partners-for-molteni-c/

This links to a picture of a beautifully simple table shown at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2010 in Milan. It's a catenary arc made from concrete. Other than that I don't know much about it, except that it comes from Foster and Partners, a London-based architecture and design firm.

Thanks to Dwell magazine's Tweet.

The "Other" Concrete Art

2010-04-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

If you search for "concrete art" on the web, as I often do, you'll find yourself stumbling across another type of concrete art. I've never been quite sure of what it meant, so I thought I'd investigate it further and come up with a summary.

This other "concrete art" developed in the 1930s in Europe, and was a form of visual art, in particular a form of abstract art. But in this abstract art nothing stood for or represented anything else. Nothing was symbolic; the shapes and colours of the work were simple lines and rectangles, primary colours. Max Bill, a Swiss artist and designer, was part of this movement.

The term came from the first and only issue of a magazine called Art Concret. "There was nothing more concrete or more real than a line, a colour, or a plane (a flat area of colour)." [Quote from www.tate.org.uk] The idea was to create new works of art from simple forms and colours, yet having nothing to do with any symbolic or representational meaning. The strength of the work would be in this simplicity which Art Concret said would "represent abstract thoughts in a sensuous and tangible form."

Concrete art was closely related to constructivism, an earlier movement that tried to reflect the industrial world by constructing art or sculpture through processes similar to what industry might have used. "Constructivism is a purely technical mastery and organisation of materials," said a 1923 manifesto. You can understand how constructivism influenced concrete art in the avoidance of meaning and symbolism.

This image is Max Bill's sculpture, Endless Ribbon, granite, 1953. You can see it's origins in the concrete art and constructivist movements.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/santinobroadcast/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Patina on Concrete

2010-03-01T20:18:00.000-08:00

I wrote about casting small parts of camera lenses back on June 21, 2009. Now I'm experimenting with applying a chemical patina to some new castings in that series.

Concrete Pins: concrete, copper leaf, patina, 2010

The effect is just what I wanted: to make the camera parts look almost as if they had been buried and dug up. After the castings were cured (about two weeks), I applied copper leaf to the smooth lens areas, and left them so that the gold size was completely dry. Then I painted on a thin wash of copper nitrate solution, exactly what I use for patination of copper and brass jewellery. To "set" the patina, I heated it very gently with a small propane/oxygen flame. Some of the patina is a very pale greenish blue, some is a light brown. The black colour is an earlier application of dyed cement that was rubbed in, rubbed off and allowed to cure.

There is the potential when doing this for water trapped in the concrete to turn to steam and either crack the concrete or cause a mini-explosion, so I always were face protection, and never heat the concrete beyond what I would call a skin-burning temperature. And always heat the pieces slowly and evenly. When the colour is right, don't quench them in water, but let them air cool, or they might crack. I finished the pins with a flat acrylic sealer to make the patina waterproof.

Jeans Filled with Concrete

2010-02-25T07:14:00.000-08:00

Why not do something interesting with your old jeans?

In 2006, artist Ron Pruitt was part of an exhibition in New York where he filled old jeans with concrete, arranging the objects in dance-like poses on the floor of the Gavin Brown’s Enterprise Gallery in Greenwich Village. You can see a couple of images on this web page:
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/honigman/honigman10-3-06.asp

In this 5 minute video the artist talks about his motivations. Warning ;) video contains some artspeak:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMAyLbqCZZ4&feature=youtube_gdata

Other artists and architects have explored the idea of using flexible material as a mold. After the concrete sets, the mold is removed. In Pruitt's work, the denim jeans are left in place.

Book Available as PDF

2010-02-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

I have just made my Concrete Handbook for Artists: Technical Notes for Small-scale Objects available as a PDF download from my web site. The 12MB digital file is available for $15. I'm confident that once people see and read the PDF version of the book many will want the "real" version in its original paperback form. I'm also hoping the PDF file will get wider distribution of the book.

One of the big advantages of a PDF file is that it is searchable on your computer. I searched for the word "metakaolin" for example, and Acrobat Reader found it 26 times in the digital file, including the definition and sources of supply. In the paperback copy you can use the index, but the PDF version is much faster. You can also print out the whole book, but this is 135 pages, so I don't imagine too many people will do that. It's at that point where I would personally buy the paperback edition. And the PDF file doesn't include the color cover. I had to cut that to keep the file size down to a reasonable amount. Other positives for the digital format? No shipping costs, which for the paperback is now $3 in Canada, $7 to the US, and $13 to all other countries. And no paper is used, just ones and zeros.

If you're interested, here's a link directly to the PDF order page:
http://makersgallery.com/concrete/bookorder-pdf.html

You might be wondering what got me started on all this. Someone emailed from Chile with a request. "Do you have a PDF version of the book? The post office here is so slow and unreliable." That got me thinking about the process so I gave the first digital copy to him.

Social Networking and Concrete

2010-02-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

I am continually amazed at how information spreads through the internet, and how we discover people that we never would have discovered 10 years ago. I have several Google Alerts set up so that when particular words appear on the web or in the news I get a notice. Today this led me to a Facebook group for an artist from Covington, LA who works with concrete and glass. Michael S Eddy is the sculptor's name, and you can join his Facebook page here. From his page I discovered many other sculptor and sculpture groups and concrete connections.

On the negative side, there is one concrete sculptor whose work comes at me through Google Alerts almost every day: videos, new photos submitted to many web sites, promotion for a book. It almost verges on spam and I suspect a full-time promoter working behind the scenes to get this work noticed. I must admit this kind of overwhelming coverage turns me off the work. I guess it's a fine line between ignoring the new media, and spending too much time on promotion. Perhaps this is the old war between what is considered "art" and what is a "business."

If I have any advice to give, it would be this (based on my own personal reactions) — do the work, put your energy and your creativity into your art. If the work is good it will be noticed. But don't deny the new media either. If it feels comfortable and natural, use it. And if your work is good, you'll have the confidence to write about it, blog about it, create a Facebook page or maybe even tweet about it!

Sculpture Winner

2010-02-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Ian Wyndlow of Ladysmith, BC who has won the 2009 Best Sculpture Award from Cheng Concrete Exchange for this pedestal sink. The sink is constructed of stacked polished concrete blocks and glass. The stack gives the illusion of being precarious, but is actually well-balanced. Wyndlow's concrete business is Liquid Stone Studios.

Here's a link to more images of the structure.

(An interesting footnote to this blog post would be whether something is considered a "sculpture" when it has a function, but I'll leave that discussion for another time.)

New Gallery Artists

2010-01-25T06:48:00.000-08:00

Grayson Malone: Persephone: metal-infused concrete

I have just updated my ArtConcrete website, the "guest gallery"section. Five new artists have been added: Edward Gennetten, Grayson Malone, Christopher Gronbeck, Carole Vincent and DrCraze.

http://www.makersgallery.com/concrete/guestgallery.html

The work ranges from concrete jewelry that incorporates recycled glass (DrCraze), to sculpture (Carole Vincent), to two-dimensional concrete wall art (Edward Gennetten).

DrCraze: concrete pendant: concrete, pigment, recycled glass

Web Site for Concrete Book

2010-01-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

The New Year brings a new marketing idea for my Concrete Handbook for Artists. Because the book is self-published and mainly available through the Art Concrete web site, I thought I would try splitting it off with its own domain name and independent web site. You can see the results here:
http://www.artconcretebook.com

The book was originally published in 2002 and updated in 2006, and has sold around the world. It's really fun to communicate with someone in the Jersey Islands in the English Channel, for example, about concrete technology and how it can be applied to creative art. Or having an email exchange with a student in the south of France attending an art college. I keep a large world map on the wall in my office and stick pins in locations where the books are mailed. About two years ago I gave up trying to fit any more pins into most of the United States and the United Kingdom. For a while I tried changing the pin colour for multiple sales, but soon gave up. Now I just add a pin for an interesting new location.

European sales of my book reflect where English is spoken.
That pin in the Azores on the left represents my first book sale.

North American sales reflect population density.
Most sales are to California, Florida, New England and New York.

I like the idea of selling Concrete Handbook for Artists directly because it often opens up a two-way communication. It is however sold through Powell's Technical Books, the Portland Cement Association in Chicago, and the Compleat Sculptor in New York.

Suitcases of Concrete

2009-12-13T09:23:00.000-08:00

A Case History, Concrete, Liverpool. Credit: That James on Flickr (cc)

What appears at first glance to be a pile of old suitcases on a street in Liverpool turns out to be a concrete sculpture installed by artist John King in 1997. The Hope Street sculpture is labelled with the names of famous Liverpool residents from the past. Titled "A Case History", the piece is a great example of public art, almost indestructible, which adds to the culture of an interesting area of Liverpool.

Other images:
http://www.freefoto.com/preview/1023-11-2
http://www.pbase.com/nwilkins/image/85238419

Underwater Concrete Sculptures

2009-12-10T06:18:00.000-08:00

What a wonderful idea this is: to combine art with environmental conservation, to combine beauty with science. More than 400 concrete sculptures are to be installed underwater off the shores of Cancun, Mexico. The project's idea is to divert underwater tourists away from the more sensitive reef areas in the Marine National Park.

The sculptures are being created by British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor on four-metre square bases which will be lifted into the ocean. They feature life-size human figures based on real people. By April, 2010, about 250 of the sculptures should be installed.

Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=360041880056

de Caires Taylor's own web site:
http://www.underwatersculpture.com/
Check out the the two videos of previous installations linked from this page.

Katherine Stanek, Sculptor

2009-12-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

Katherine Stanek is a New Jersey sculptor working in concrete and bronze. This is a video showing work from a recent exhibition in Philadelphia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP38NbVSbCE

Guardian, 2008, concrete with marble aggregate

Her own web site has more images:
http://www.katherinestanek.com/

Concrete Lace Tiles

2009-12-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

Jethro Macey is a UK-based designer who works in a range of media and function, from wood stools to steel to tiles. His concrete tiles are inspired by traditional lace patterns.

Digital processes (e.g. CNC milling) were used to make the original tile, then silicone molds were made from that master to cast the tiles.
Macey's web site is here:
http://www.jethromacey.com/shop/home.php
You can also see more of his tiles at:
http://www.thethirdnature.co.uk/search.asp?types=yes&type=Concrete+Tiles

Concrete Dome, Nuclear Waste

2009-11-30T19:37:00.000-08:00

This may not be art, but it's an interesting use of concrete. Or perhaps the art is unintentional?

The Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific contains one small island called Runit. Between 1977 and 1980 the U.S. government buried almost 85,000 cubic meters of radioactive debri from earlier nuclear tests. The debri was dumped into a crater on Runit left over from a 1958 blast—mixed with Portland cement—then covered with the concrete dome shown in the photograph. The dome is about 18" thick and 350 feet wide.

Credit: Defense Special Weapons Agency

Yes, those are people walking on the dome. More information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enewetak_Atoll

Soweto Concrete Sculpture

2009-11-13T07:33:00.001-08:00

A young Soweto artist has been awarded an honour by having a concrete sculptor piece chosen for his President's residence. Lwandiso Njara, a third year student at Tshwane University of Technology, had just been named a runner-up in the Young Concrete Sculptor Awards. The sculptor portrays nine Metro bus drivers on a journey in aid of a wage increase.

http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=23424

The PPC Young Concrete Sculptor Awards has been running for 18 years and is one of South Africa's most prestigious art competitions. Young artists submit sculptures using concrete. It is open to anyone with or without formal training.

Lavassa Furniture: Peter Harrison

2009-10-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite magazines is Dwell, a contemporary architecture magazine with an interesting bias towards both modernist and green design. At the back of the magazine I discovered an ad for a furniture designer who works near Saratoga Springs, NY. Peter Harrison uses combinations of concrete, wood and stainless steel.

I like that way that he uses concrete as simply another material in a vocabulary of materials. It seems entirely appropriate where it is used in each individual piece. Often designers seem to do one of two things with concrete: either disguise it—making it look like stone for example—or brag about its rough, urban appearance. Here it's just another material for constructing functional, simple but beautiful objects. It's made into shelves, columns and even corner connectors.

Harrison's work is at http://www.lavassa.com/.

Dwell magazine also has an extensive web site at http://www.dwell.com/.

Garden Sculptures: Pieter Doef

2009-09-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

As a visitor on a recent studio tour around Merrickville, Ontario, I discovered the work of Pieter Doef. His human figures are about half life size, modelled in clay, then cast in concrete from a plaster mould of the form. Most of the sculptures in the gardens of his rural property are of people, but there are also some abstracts forms.

Pieter explained that he uses a simple mix: one half builder's sand and one half cement. He's also a prolific painter.

There are more images on a Facebook group started for him:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2889151170#/group.php?gid=2889151170

More on Green

2009-08-20T18:28:00.001-07:00

Portland cement production is said to account for about 5% of greenhouse gas (CO2) production in the world. One company is working on a cement that actually absorbs greenhouse gases and emits less in its production.

Novacem (U.K.) won an award in January of this year, the Rushlight Award, for innovation and environmental benefits in the development of this new type of cement. Quoting from Novacem's press release:

"In contrast to Portland cement, the Novacem process causes minimal CO2 emissions. It then hardens by absorbing CO2 and so locks atmospheric CO2 into construction materials. This means that for every tonne of Portland cement replaced by Novacem cement, ~1 tonne of CO2 is captured and stored indefinitely. This will transform the cement industry from a significant emitter to a significant absorber of CO2."

The recyclable cement system is based on magnesium oxide and special mineral additives.

The sooner this product is in production, the sooner we can feel better about using cement, both in the construction industry and our own artwork.

Fame in Turkey

2009-07-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

A magazine published in Istanbul, Turkey, called BetonArt, has published several articles about contemporary concrete design. Unfortunately I don't speak Turkish, but the pictures are worth looking at. I've uploaded a PDF file (1 MB) to the GoogleGroups ArtConcrete web site if anyone wants to take a look. (You have to join the group before you can look, but maybe it's a group you'd be interested in joining?)

They used some of my concrete jewellery in one article: page 57 images 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7. The magazine's mandate is about promoting concrete to the architecture community. The articles cover such topics as furniture, Litracon, bowls, jewellery.

Here's a quick link: http://groups.google.com/group/ArtConcrete/files then click on Betanart23.pdf. If you're not a member of ArtConcrete you'll have to subscribe.

Veijo Rönkkönen Concrete Figures

2009-07-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

Photo: Veli Granö, from the book Self-Made Man, by Veli Granö

Veijo Rönkkönen is a Finnish artist who lives near the Russian border. On his small farm near Parikkala he has created almost 500 life-sized human figures in concrete, many of them exercising and stretching. His sculpture park is apparently open to the public.

There are two good sets of images to look through on Flickr:
http://tinyurl.com/ktjxhc
http://tinyurl.com/mcpyne

Mountainous Molding Project

2009-07-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

MuseumRock Products from Louisville KY have made what may very well be the largest molded concrete object ever made. They made the mold in California, shipped it to Hawaii, and poured in hundreds of thousands of pounds of colored grout over a matrix of steel rebar. The finished "rock" measures 136 feet long and 22 feet high. It is part of an educational and interpretive Navajo Indian Memorial located in Na Aina Kai Botanical Garden and Sculpture Park which is slated to be open to the public in 2010.

The mold was made of rubber coated EPS styrofoam. 17,000 pounds of pigment was used to colour the concrete.

http://museumrock.com/most_outrageous_project.htm

Forest Boone of MuseumRock says: "My mix was just a standard grout mix 4,500 psi... one part course manufactured sand and two parts dune sand from Asia mixing in an auger mixer. I poured it in about 20 different lifts, changing colors each lift."

Photo credits: MuseumRock

Concrete Camera Parts...

2009-06-21T12:54:00.001-07:00

Lens pins. 2009. 3.5 cm (1.5"). Concrete, pigment, gold leaf.

This is an extension of the ideas I was writing about in my previous blog about the concrete cameras. I used the same silicone mold, but only cast small parts of it in the medium of concrete. As I mentioned before, the process of seeing is what interests me, so I have gold-leafed what would be the glass lens in these pieces. I'm still exploring the contrast between precious and non-precious in the jewelry world, so concrete and gold leaf are perfect to express that.

Concrete Cameras

2009-06-10T06:15:00.001-07:00

Concrete Camera 1

This is a concept I have been thinking about for some time and am now beginning to resolve, having cast and finished the first two in the series. The concept is that "seeing" is the important part of the creative process; it's perception, not the objects or the media that we use to express our ideas. The central truths of the creative process are in the seeing, or to put it another way, in our points of view.

A concrete camera somehow gets closer to this truth. It has weight and presence. We want to pick it up to see if it works, if we can see through it to capture an image – but we can't. In the first camera (cast from a mold I made of a 1949 Leica, an archetype camera if there ever was one) even the lens is concrete. Nothing is functional, but it reminds us of the process of taking pictures, of seeing, of choosing a subject. My initial idea was to make a lot of these and leave them as artifacts at scenic locations in the countryside, like fossilized records of what we used to record things.

In the second camera I cast a lens in place. (I had earlier applied gold leaf to the back of the lens.) I like the fact that the clarity of the lens connects with the purity of the idea of seeing – and contrasts with the crudeness of the concrete – even though the light goes nowhere, never exposes film, never records anything.

Concrete Camera 2

I'm not sure where the series is going now. A local camera store was able to give me some old lenses that they didn't want, so I have been taking them apart for parts, so I have no shortage of those. I have also been making small concrete pins by casting into parts and corners of the mold.

The concrete mix in these pieces is half sand, half grey Portland cement with the usual additives like stone dust and fibres. The mold is a two-part silicone material that I have written about in other blog postings. The finish is an acrylic colour rubbed into the surface, then a flat clear acrylic spray as a sealer.

Concrete Arches from 1910

2009-06-09T13:59:00.000-07:00

Former water filtration plant in Owen Sound, Ontario

Last weekend in an Open Doors tour in my local town of Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada, I discovered what few people even know exists: the abandoned water filtration plant. It was built in 1910 of poured concrete and you can still see the wood grain on the boards that were used to form the graceful arch structure which makes up two 'rooms' each 160' X 80'. Water from the Sydenham River was let into the chambers where it was filtered through a two-foot depth of sand, then through a 12" pipe six miles to the small town. A crew of 400 took two years to build the filter system.

Every couple of months the sand had to be removed and washed, then put back in the rooms through round holes in the roof. The entire structure was buried in earth and grass grown on the top. Over 2,000,000 gallons of water a day was treated by the system.

The filtration system has been closed since the 1960's and due to vandalism is only open to the public on special occasions. You can still walk over the grass on top of the structure and peek in one locked gate by following a trail in the Inglis Falls Conservation area. Owen Sound and Shallow Lake were early centres for Portland cement production from the 1880's.

http://www.greysauble.on.ca/ca-inglisfalls3.html

Timelessness and Concrete

2009-04-17T08:28:00.001-07:00

Thinking about concrete and timelessness, I came across a reference from The Long Now about a web site that archives "the most fascinating abandoned man-made creations." The site is called Artificial Owl and is a wonderful collection of photographs of abandoned man-made creations from around the world. Here I stumbled on this image of a large concrete face sculpture of Ferdinand Marcos; the photograph was taken following an explosion in 2002 that defaced it. There are more images here, with some "before" photographs.

Two comments:
First, it makes one think about how long most concrete art will be around, unless it is willfully destroyed, and even then the rubble will be around for a long time. One of the appeals of concrete for artists is this timelessness.
Second, this makes a great example of how to build a large-scale ferrocement sculpture... Notice the strong armature made from reinforced concrete pillars. The armature has been wrapped and overlaid with steel rebar, and a concrete mix applied to that. The concrete has been applied in sections, whether that is to imitate stone blocks or to control cracking I'm not sure. It looks like the interior space is large enough to be a room - shades of the movie Being Jon Malkovich.

More Girli Concrete

2009-04-16T07:17:00.001-07:00

Concrete and linen from Tactility Factory

Girli Concrete has just announced their new web site, called Tactility Factory:
http://www.tactilityfactory.com/

The company's aim is to make more "tactile" concrete, which means adding fabric to the surface of concrete, usually through casting it in place. The web site explains that Tactility Factory both works on specific commissions/installations and also partners with the concrete industry to produce larger quantities of precast objects such as tiles.

'Green' Fibres for Concrete

2009-04-12T07:28:00.000-07:00

Here's another way to make concrete a 'greener' material. Instead of using newly manufactured polypropylene or nylon fibres in the mix, you can now get nylon fibers made entirely from recycled used carpeting.

Chopped plastic strands added to concrete prevent or reduce the amount of shrinkage cracking in the initial set. This leads to greater overall strength in the final concrete. In small-scale concrete artwork, fibres make a more workable mix with less separation, easier to apply to vertical surfaces–more clay-like. The fibres improve tensile strength and in some cases can be used to replace or reduce steel reinforcing.

http://www.nycon.com/NyconG.htm

Nycon in Westerly, RI, has developed the technology of harvesting old carpets. This not only saves carpets from going into landfill, but also means fewer petrochemicals are used. Their brand of recycled nylon fibre is called NyconG. One variety called "ConTrol-G-CounterTop" is recommended for applications including castings such as statuary and countertops.

Concrete Art Conflict

2009-03-26T06:09:00.000-07:00

An interesting conflict is developing in a community near Liverpool, UK, where a huge concrete sculpture in the shape of a head will be built on a former slag heap. Read an article online here for a description of this all-too-familiar discussion.

Local residents say the project is "bonkers" and that the 2 million pounds could have been better spent helping the 5000 people in the region who are unemployed, or helping local industries through difficult times.

In contrast, this culture website praises the project as "a gateway feature between Liverpool and Manchester." The sculpture "Dream" will stand 66 feet high and is to be constructed of blocks of white concrete. Spanish sculptor Jaume Plesna was commissioned to do the work after a panel of ex-miners chose the design. "We wanted something that was more than just another mining monument. Thanks to this fantastic artist I believe we have a piece of artwork that not only reflects the past heritage of the site but also projects it into the future."

It's interesting to compare the articles in these two web sites: one slams public art as being imposed on the community from outside, the other argues that members of the public have chosen and commissioned the work and were involved at all stages. It's hard to believe they're talking about the same project. Construction is already under way.

Girli Concrete

2009-03-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

Two women from Northern Ireland have partnered to experiment with combining concrete and softness, two seemingly opposed concepts.
http://girliconcrete.blogspot.com/
New link (April 16, 2009) http://www.tactilityfactory.com/

"Girli Concrete is an R&D project (for Tactility Factory) that aims to create innovative ‘soft’ building surfaces. It challenges the perception of textiles as the ‘dressing’ to structure and instead integrates textile technologies into the production of building products. Tactility Factory is a collaboration between Belford (textiles) and Morrow (architecture). Its conceptual challenge is MAINSTREAMING TACTILITY in the Built Environment. "

Dragonfly Wings

2009-03-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

This is a reduced image of the dragonfly wings I used in the obelisk sculpture shown in the last blog entry. You may have noticed that I've been using images of flight, wings and bird bones, in some of these recent pieces. I like the contrast between the weight of the concrete and the idea of flight. The brass wings were made by photo-transferring this image onto the brass and acid etching the image right through to the other side.

2nd in the Series

2009-02-23T12:25:00.000-08:00

In my last post I showed an image of an obleisk-shaped sculpture. Here's the second in that series. The concrete is made with white Portland cement. The dragonfly wings that hang in the open spaces are photo-etched brass, but left in the acid long enough that the etch goes right through. The image of the wings came from a macro photo of a blue darner's dragonfly wings (road-killed) that I manipulated so that they are about 7" long. The brass is patinated black. Again, I appplied gold leaf to all the interior spaces to reflect light.

New sculptures

2009-02-15T13:29:00.000-08:00

In preparation for a small show at Harbinger Gallery in Waterloo, ON, I've just completed two concrete sculptures based on an obelisk shape. They are about 22" high, and cast with the same molding process–which is basically 1X6's, some old panelling, nails and styrofoam. The foam (to make the negative spaces) was cut on an electric jigsaw and put together with double-sided tape. Then it was cast in place in the wooden mold, removing it later by breaking it apart and pulling out the pieces. The wider base was cast around the vertical form a couple of days later.

The concrete is similar to a mortar mix: sand to cement 2:1, metakaolin (about 8% by weight to the cement), PVA fibers, stone dust, water reducer, black pigment. Over a few days I sanded the piece, filled in holes, resanded, and finally added a very fine skim coat which was wet sanded. Gold leaf was applied to all the interior surfaces to reflect light on to the bone form, which was cast with a mix of white Portland cement and light coloured sand. The mold for this was made from a two-part silicone putty that I wrote about in an earlier blog. The original bone from which the copy was made, is the long wing bone from a seagull.

The show of my new work is at Harbinger Gallery, Waterloo, ON, February 28 to March 21, 2009, and is a combination of recent jewellery and sculpture.

Concrete Sculpture Reduces Air Pollution

2009-01-09T06:57:00.000-08:00

Recent research into cement has produced concretes that actually reduce air pollution by chemically combining with some of those pollutants. These are called photocatalytic cements. On the scale of small sculpture this will not make a difference to the world's air quality, but in Dundee, Scotland, two artists have used the idea in a large outdoor sculpture in their city centre.

The sculpture is in the form of a car draped in a blanket, but the whole concrete form is white. As a conceptual piece, the sculpture is brilliant. It's as if the last car car in the world has been covered to protect it as a museum piece. At the same time it is healing the air, literally, through exposure to light which triggers a photocatalyst in the cement, which in turn decomposes certain toxic substances in the air such as nitrous oxide.

Matthew Dalziel and Louise Scullion are the two artists who designed the sculpture which was commissioned by Dundee City Council. It uses TX Aria cement which was first developed in Italy.

One of the ironies of the sculpture is that cement production itself generates large amounts of CO2, one of our primary greenhouse gases.

More information at:
http://www.buildingtalk.com/news/cac/cac124.html
Photo at:
http://www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net/news/news.asp?id=5738&title=Castle%27s+anti-pollution+cement+appears+in+Dundee

Essroc Cement has brought this material (along with TX Arca cement, which is self cleaning) to North America. Concrete Decor has archived an article here:
http://www.concretedecor.net/All_Access/601/CD601-product_profile.cfm

Small Scale Duplicate Castings

2009-01-04T16:43:00.000-08:00

I've recently completed a short series of wall-mounted pins (brooches), playing on the idea that things–jewelery objects in particular–really change when the material changes, even if the form is identical. It's interesting to compare the value we place on precious metals compared to more utilitarian materials. The sets of three pins are based on one original pod-like form made from fusing silver sheet and wire. This is a technique where you are working with the silver in it's "slush phase", the red-heat temperature range where the silver is above a solid, but below a liquid. You can fuse pieces of silver together, scrape texture into the surface, break pieces off, melt wire into the surface. After immersing in acid to remove oxides, the surface is burnished, but a lot of the roughness and spontaneity of the process remains. Here's a picture of one of the sets:

The silver pin is the one in the middle. On the left, I used a black-pigmented cement mixed with stone dust and additives. On the right, I used white Portland cement with stone dust and additives, and after it was set I rubbed in a thin slurry of pigmented cement, which was mostly then rubbed off.

After some research I discovered the ideal molding material. It's a two-part silicone called Knead-a-Mold. (There are other brands as well.) You take equal parts and mix the putty-like substance together with your fingers–it's completely non-toxic and can even be used for food molds–until the colours are blended completely, then push it against and around the object you want to duplicate. I did this with the silver pin, let it set, then cast plaster around that to give the mold support, then took all the components apart. I mixed up the cement and packed it into the empty silicone mold backed by the plaster. I had previously made pin back assemblies which I embedded into the cement before it set.

The concrete pins are dentical in every way to the original silver one, except in the material itself. Every detail of the metal's fused texture is visible. These two-part non-toxic silicones have amazing potential. I mounted the pins onto a matte white acrylic sheet so they could be placed on a wall when not being worn.

2008-11-22T11:21:00.000-08:00

Concrete Construction Online is a really useful resource for concrete sculpture, mainly because of their large inventory of articles from back issues of Residential Concrete and Decorative Concrete magazines. The following link is for an article which gives a good overview of several artists' approaches to concrete sculpture. It was originally published in 2006 in Residential Concrete Magazine.

http://www.concreteconstructiononline.com/industry-news.asp?sectionID=715articleID=292505&artnum=1

Several other excellent articles about concrete sculpture are available as PDF downloads, by searching through the "news and articles" link on their menu bar using the word "sculpture." You'll find information about the artists as well as technical information such as mix design and process.

At Ease with the Material

2008-09-26T06:59:00.000-07:00

I received an email today, an edited version of which follows:

Dear Mr. Goss,
I have your book and I have been trying to read, research, and experiment as much as I can before I start in my quest of creating sculptures using concrete. During my research I came across an amazing artist named Mike Moran who uses a technique that makes the concrete look like clay (http://www.anewleafgallery.com/Artist-Detail.cfm?ArtistsID=67). There is nothing out there that explains how to get this look on concrete and there is no way that I can get that look experimenting. By any chance do you happen to know how it is done?
Thank you

This is what I replied:

Thank you so much for telling me about this artist. The work is really amazing. But to your questions...

The simplest answer is that this artist has obviously been working in concrete for some time and understands its qualities and limitations. I'm sure you could get the same effects, but it takes time and lots of practice. I wouldn't worry too much about mixes and recipes–the main issue is understanding the qualities of the material. These pieces weren't done in the same way that you would work with clay. The armatures are carefully worked out; there is probably steel mesh wrapped around the steel rods so that the concrete is given support while it is applied. You cannot get these kind of forms in concrete without that steel structure underneath. You can make concrete more clay-like by adding fibers and pozzolans (e.g. metakaolin, as I described in the book), but it never becomes as malleable and sticky as clay. You have to learn to work within those limitations.

If you look at the clay head pieces as an example–
The gallery describes it: "With very expressive features, this large head appears to rise out of the ground or table top. Moran etched, burnished, and stained the concrete to convey the illusion of weathered clay." As the description says, it's trying to look like clay, but that's an illusion. My best guess is that the head was basically made around steel mesh, from a fairly stiff grey sand/cement mix. Then thinner layers of black-dyed mix were applied by hand (you can see the marks of some of his tools). It looks as if he's using a fairly stiff mix and really pushing it hard against the surface. When it's partially set, he may be scraping some of that off, burnishing it with wood or steel tools, or rough sanding it a bit, then adding a slightly different tinted mix. The white Portland cement (or maybe that's even paint?) appears to have been added last.

As I've implied, this works looks easy—just as an experienced clay artist can make working with clay look easy. But it's not. It looks easy because he's had lots of experience understanding the material and is at ease with the material. I think one of the signs of what we call good art is that it appears to be effortless. But it can only be effortless when the materials are mastered.

I wouldn't worry about doing more research into concrete before starting. My advice would be to just start, and keep doing it, working through the failures until you develop this ease. I know you asked a technical question, and in a sense I've answered from another direction, but I hope it helps.

Concrete Transmits Light

2008-08-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

LiTriCon has been around for a few years now, but it still sounds like science fiction to those who think of concrete as massive, opaque and heavy. Essentially, LiTraCon is a fine concrete mix with about 4% of its volume taken up with optical glass fibres. What you end up with is translucent concrete, that is, concrete that light and shadows can be transmitted through.

This blog has good summary of what it is and where it's heading:
http://greenlineblog.com/litracon-light-transmitting-concrete/

Of course you don't get complete tramsission of the scene behind the wall, but you do get the play of light and shadow, the shadows of leaves or people walking by. So instead of concrete becoming a visual barier, it's suddenly opened up. The uses in architecture are immediately obvious, but in small-scale work lamps and light surrounds come to mind, and LiTraCon is already making those for sale.
http://www.litracon.hu/

Andreas Bittis in Germany is also making "translucent concrete," so it appears this is a trend.
http://www.andreasbittis.de/
And here's a third one:
http://www.luccon.com/

Little and Lewis

2008-06-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

Little and Lewis create concrete sculptures for the garden in bright colours and shapes that are inspired by both plants and classical Greece. Their book, called A Garden Gallery, by George Little and David Lewis and published by Timber Press, is now out of print but you can get it from their web site at http://www.littleandlewis.com/. I already link to them on my Art Concrete web site but saw a recent article and photographs of their work in the online web site of the OCRegister.

Concrete Sculptures in Catalonia

2008-06-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

The Guardian website for May 28, 2008, has an article about some life-size and (be warned) x-rated concrete sculptures in Catalonia just north of Barcelona, Spain. You'll also find a small slide show there. Since the 1970's, artist Xicu Cabanyes has been adding to his private sculpture park.
You can also do a search on Flickr for Cabanyes' work:
http://flickr.com/search/?q=Xicu%20Cabanyes&w=all

More About Simple and Fast

2008-05-30T11:31:00.001-07:00

In my last post I was talking about using modelling clay as a fast and easy mold material. Here are a couple of "IDEA" pins from a series I have been working on, for a show at Shaw Jewelry Gallery. The exhibition is called "Set in Concrete" and will be the work of six jewelers who all make jewelry in concrete. It will be on July 3 to 16, in Northeast Harbor, Maine.

For this series, I used rubber letter stamps impressed in a hard modelling clay, then pressed a softer clay into that. Then I pulled the soft clay off, distorted it, sliced it up and reassembled it so it was skewed, then cast a fine concrete mix into that mold. In the one pin you can just make out little pieces of clay imbedded in the folds. In the black one I applied gold leaf to the recessed letters. The pin backs are two tie tacs (not shown). They are fusion welded onto thin bronze strips that are cast just below the back surface.

Keep It Simple

2008-05-22T07:36:00.001-07:00

In my own work, I try to keep things as simple as possible. With a material like concrete (or even clay or metal) it's really easy to get bogged down in the details, the additives, temperatures, tensile strengths and so on. It's not that these details aren't important, but you don't want to lose sight of the fact that creating something, expressing something, making art - these are the reasons you are using that particular material.

As an antidote to that technological bog, I often use modelling clay as a quick mold. I use Plasticene®, but any oil-based modelling clay works. You can work directly in the material with rubber stamps, carving tools, or even your fingers. It's a relaxing creative process with no worries about making mistakes - just roll out some more and try again. I work with two hardnesses of modelling clay. For example, if I wanted letters to be raised on the surface of a final concrete piece, I would use rubber stamp letters (like the kind you find in children's printing sets) pressed into a flat sheet of the harder Plasticene, dust it with talcum powder, then press the softer clay into that mold. When pulled apart, this softer clay now becomes the mold for the final concrete. You have to be careful placing the concrete into the soft mold as the surface is easily marred.

In this concrete pin, I created a simple mold from modelling clay, by pressing a ridged form into the soft clay, texturing the negative space with lines, then cast concrete into it. Later I applied gold leaf.

Concrete Reveries by Mark Kingwell

2008-05-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

Mark Kingwell, cultural theorist and University of Toronto philosophy professor, has just published a new book called Concrete Reveries. Although it is not really about concrete, it sounds like an interesting read – dealing with the ideas of cities as creative works in progress. I heard Kingwell speak at a lecture at Harbourfront in Toronto recently, and he has a unique yet understandable way of helping you see large issues. He uses "the urban experience to illustrate the dynamic between concreteness and abstraction that operates within us," says the publisher, Penguin Group Canada.

"Any material becomes the sum of its treatments," Kingwell says in the introduction to the book. I think this is particularly true of concrete.

New 'Green' Fibres for Concrete

2008-05-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

For those interested in reinforcing fibers for concrete (these are the chopped strands that help prevent shrinkage cracks and on small scale work help increase tensile strength), there's a new fiber making process from Nycon. They are using post consumer carpets (that translates as old carpets that are about to be thrown away) remade into polypropylene or nylon fibers for added strength in your concrete mix. Old carpets are a huge landfill problem, so this is a great solution.

The new fibers are called Nycon-G. From a recent news release:
"Available in both nylon and polypropylene blends, Nycon-G fibers represent a break-through in green building technology. They are the only fibers on the market today that have no net negative impact on the environment."

I've recommended using fibers as a concrete additive both on the Art Concrete website and my own book, Concrete Handbook for Artists. I particularly like PVA (poly vinyl alcohol) fibers, although these are not part of this green initiative.

Here's a start...

2008-04-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

I already have a couple of websites, one about art concrete. It's not like I need another, but this one will give a more personal point of view about my concrete life, or more accurately, the part of my life where I work in concrete.

What does that mean? Sharing my thoughts on creating concrete objects whether they be jewellery or sculpture, dealing with technical problems and hopefully solving them, letting others know what interesting and relevant new developments and web sites are out there.