Mandarin Magic Marriage Icon Print

I have always wanted to see other artists work areas and try to understand how their mind works. I particularly liked seeing Calder's work shop. He had a lot of tables piled with works in progress or what some would say junk metal. There he is with his tin snips cutting out pieces for his circus people and mobiles. It is obvious that he had a plan. It is not very often that I have a plan. I usually cut up a bunch of parts and put them on a table. I mostly work with polystyrene foam. Foam packaging has a lot of interesting forms to cut up. Then I pick pieces up and look for a place to glue them together that is interesting to look at. When I make something that is interesting to my eye I stop. Then I take it to the foundry to turn it into a piece of metal, by magic. A big long story for another time. Then I try to put a name on my piece and make up a story about it. In one way it seems easy but in another way it is hard because you never really know when you are at your destination. On this piece once I cut the pieces I could see faces. I guess I look for happy accidents. This might be an interesting logo design sculpture for a company that makes Chinese fortune cookies. If you like this piece you might like to see more. I have hundreds more in different styles and themes on this site. Enter "Arfsten sculpture" in the search box in the upper right to see them. Maquettes also make fine desk top sculpture and will come with a stone base to sit on. There is also some on you tube that shows it in the round with some conversation to explain things. Search “You Tube Richard Arfsten sculpture” also Pinterest boards “Richard Arfsten Architectural Abstract sculpture”. The major value in these pieces is the maquette aspect. The maquette is a three-dimensional model or blueprint that works to show that the design is accurate and can be built larger. A metal fabricator measures off of it to make the patterns to build from, just like a tailor uses your measurements to make your clothes. When presenting ideas to a client for consideration most sculptors submit a concept drawing on a piece of paper. A maquette is the actual sculpture in miniature. When you lift it up to view at eye level it will depict the sculpture exactly as it will be seen in real life as if you were walking up to and around it. For a small additional fee you can buy the enlargement rights to have a metal fabricator of your choice build it to any size out of any kind of sheet metal. The maquette is lightweight - it can easily be mailed anywhere. Building the enlargement close to where it is to be used saves in transportation cost and import duties and you control all the details and eliminate my supervising fee.