Terry’s Tips – May/June 2006

I keep thinking I’ll run out of ideas for this column, but so far it hasn’t happened. If you use felt for the bottom of your pieces, don’t use household cement unless you invert the sculpture until it dries. The glue may wick through the felt before it’s dry and onto your nice varnished coffee table. Don’t be impatient to show off your efforts. Check for hardened glue that might cause scratches.

Ziploc bags can be used conveniently in a tool box to hold small grinder blades and their adapters, sanding discs, carving bits. A copper pipe section can be capped on one end (soldered) and flared on the other to fit in a hole in a rock to create a watertight place for a few flower stems: voila, an attractive vase out of a scrap.

Sorting through old sculpture magazines I saw some sculptures that created mass by cementing granite countertop scraps together. They were mostly for bases, but some had been carved as part of the sculpture. Small pieces, which I find to be tippy on the table, can be pinned to a small base (kinda like ballast) using a nail, with holes in the base and sculpture serving as sleeves. I generally glue it into one or the other to avoid loss.

I employed Elaine’s “Stonehenge” insert concept with some other ideas in my two “Bubbles” pieces. I couldn’t get the black silicone technique to work with the thicker ones. The black slate discs are held in place with black plastic irrigation tubing used as o-rings, pressured and greased into grooves in both the slate and alabaster. The gap is 1/8”-3/16”.  The orange discs are secured in the approximate 1/16” opening by friction on 2mm foam sheets (available in the craft department of Joanne’s ETC) cut to about half inch strips and wrapped around the discs, then slid into the holes with some lanolin greasing the way. After the first try I put contact paper around the outside of the hole’s opening to avoid scratching the alabaster. Cutesy pieces – but my inventiveness has been satisfied for awhile.