HOW A BRONZE IS MADE
The Flight of the Terns:
The evolution of a work of art
By Apil E. Barth, published in 40 Magazine
William Barth Osmundsen is a sculptor. He recently completed an impressive work in bronze. "Flight of the Terns". When an artist decides to cast sculpture in bronze, he becomes the driving force of a team effort. He is like a conductor of a symphony. He guides 20 or more skilled artisians through the intricacies of his sculpture, and they in turn, interpret his ideas through their work with plaster, wax, ceramic, metal, and chemicals. The foundry is their concert hall. Artist and craftsmen work together here to bring an idea to fruition. In reviewing sculpture, one tends to fall back on texbooks abstractions such as strength, movement. balance, and form, which are important to composition, but which tell so little of the physical work involved. It was a day by day effort, however, invisible in the finished piece, that interested us. With this in mind, William Barh Osmundsen invited us to follow the work in progress on a commissioned piece he was just beginning.
Our first view of "Flight of the Terns" was on paper, where Osmundsen had roughtly sketched several angles of his idea. The next step was to transform the sketch into three dimensions by creating a wax model. Using the sketch as a guidline, Osmundsen began shaping the birds, connecting them, defining the space between them, reshaping, refining, and unifying the piece. After a month, the rough form became the finished model, ready for it's trip to the foundry. It was the first of many such trips that Osmundsen would make to oversee the laborious phases required to transform this fragile prototype into immortal bronze