Woven Experiment No.70 - Wax corn dollie

Woven Experiment No.70 - Wax corn dollie

I recently received a lovely gift from the UK Straw Weavers Organisation of a sheaf of wheat, this prompted me to create a corn dollie with a difference, a 40cm long wax corn dollie.

To create the 40cm length took 5 lengths of 3mm wax around 300cm per length, I began with a small neck and began to weave. The lengths I was working was so long I needed to stand upon a chair to allow them to move freely and not become tangled. As I got to the half way mark it dawned on me that if any of the strands snapped it would be very difficult to splice in a new piece of wax, so I continued more slowly and took more care.

The result is a corn dollie that does have a slight taper along its length but is not too noticable, I was disappointed that over 300 cm only creates such a small length of corn dollie. 

Maybe this could be wrapped around a plaster core for casting, maybe a shape like Plaster Carving Experiment No.8 ?

Woven Experiment No.69 - Wax drips

Woven Experiment No.69 - Wax drips

The melting idea has worked but is very very slow. It does however, if you don’t heat the wax too much, create beautiful little droplets that retain their shape whilst resetting. If the temperature is too high the wax runs and spreads too much when the droplet hits the surface of the plaster.

The result is a very interesting surface texture that highlights the simplicity of the carved piece within. The question is however, will this cast? Will the delicate texture be still visible once bronze? 

New Idea for sculpture

New idea 

If you can remember back when I cast my first piece of investment plaster and it got stuck in the bucket, well when it finally came out of the bucket it wasn’t usable so I put it to one side.

I had a unused block, a tub of wax end pieces and my wax welder and I kept returning to them during my research wondering if there is something I could do with them. Last year I attended a great course at YSP (Yorkshire Sculpture Park) on casting wax from clay originals. One of the pieces of equipment wax a wax kettle for melting large quantities of wax for pouring into plaster moulds. I wondered, could I carve the waste section of plaster and the cover it with melted wax? Yes, possibly but two problems, first I don’t have a wax kettle and second how do you safely pour molten wax over an item?

Then the idea struck, I have a welder, why can’t I turn up the temperature and simply touch the wax to the tip to melt it, then catch the drips on the plaster.

It works so I will go and melt and report back.