national sculpture competition

[craigchivers]

Hi everyone,
I'm participating in the National Sculpture Competition. It's being held at the New York Academy of Art (my old alma mater) It's great to be back in New York after being away for so long. Here are pictures from day 1. It will run 5 days and i'll try to keep posting pictures every day. The day is divided into 3hrs in the morning and 3 hrs in the afternoon. This morning there was no work in clay, we were only allowed to make our armatures and articulate them. I wanted to take pictures of the piece before i got the clay onto it, but i was a few minutes late coming back from lunch and then launched into the clay. We are supposed to make a figure that is 30-36" tall. I hope that no one measures mine because it looks like it will end up being 29.5"! I'm sure this will be fine. If not i'll blame my canadian-ness and say i only know metric! haha!
cheers to all,
craig

[sculpturedolls]

Excellent! I hope you have a wonderful experience with the competition. How many others are competing with you and do you know them? Is this your first time competing at NSC? It looks like it would be a lot of fun and maybe you'll win! I look forward to seeing your sculpture pics as it progresses.

~SD

[craigchivers]

Here are pics from day 2. 3hrs of modeling in clay in the morning and another 3hrs in the afternoon. Thanks Tamara. I actually did participate in the competition way back in 2001 when i was living in new york and it was being held in philly. They selected 15 people to compete this year. I'll have to ask how many applicants there were in total. It is far too much fun! 24hrs of modeling in clay and i don't have to pick up the tab, no complaints here! The new york academy took us all out for dinner at a fabulous italian restaurant tonight. I ate and drank to my hearts content. Certainly i've had worse italian food in italy!
cheers to all,
craig

[craigchivers]

Here's pics from day 3.
Thanks to all for looking.
Cheers,
craig

[craigchivers]

Ok here's day 4. That just leaves tomorrow morning. 3 more hours to go and then there will be a jury followed by awards.
cheers,
craig

[Rob Lineberger]

Good luck to you! looks like you've moved swiftly but surely thus far.

[craigchivers]

Here's the final touches from day 5. I didn't win, but that's ok. I had a blast at the competition and it has been great to be back in nyc for the week.
Cheers to all,
craig

[Merlion]

I missed this thread. Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing.

What happens to this clay piece after the NYC compeition?

[Merlion]

Cast it in bronze?

[craigchivers]

Thanks to all for checking this out. After the competition I took a few hours to quickly cast it in plaster. I had a bit of a nightmare experience. I was going for speed casting (not that i'm THAT speedy) and on an impulse i grabed a can of univeral mold release. I sprayed the crud out of the mold before casting and it didn't release! I carried the cast piece onto a plane (i can't believe i got away with that!) with half of the mold clinging to it. I was able to chip and scrape the mold off of it when i got it back to canada but it was quite time consuming. Unfortunately i didn't take any pictures of it before i had to quickly get back to tokyo. It's now free of the mold, standing with all appendages attached but the surface is in pretty rough shape. I'm still hoping to be able to have a sculpture studio here by autumn. Who knows when i'll be able to get back to finishing this piece though. I certainly won't be back in north america for a while.
Cheers to all,
craig

[topsculptures]

what's the material making it?



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