the dragonfly

‘brings dreams to reality and is the messenger of wisdom and enlightenment from other realms’ —author unknown

The second semester of my freshman year I took my first college sculpture I class. I chose sculpture as my major because I really wanted to be able to work with metal. The last  project in the class was a bronze casting. I had never casted metal before but I was excited to learn how.

The most time consuming part of this project was making the wax figure. It takes up a lot of time because the wax has to be warm otherwise it can not be shaped as easily. After the wax figure is completed and the vents are attached, plaster is poured around it. Finally, melted bronze is poured into the plaster mold and left to cool.

When my bronze figure was taken out of the mold it looked different than I expected. It had extra bronze attached to it and the metal was dark and dull. The figure needed to be sand blasted before the extra bronze was cut off. I think the best part about this project was polishing my bronze figure and seeing the finished product. The dragonfly turned out better than I expected and hopefully my next casting will be even better.