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| Mill Creek Studios - Manufacturing
Process |
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What is it made of? How long did it take for the artist
to create? Do you fire each piece? How are they painted? These are
some of the commonly asked questions at an artist appearance or trade
show. |
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| To begin with, any artwork is born in the artists' imagination,
and takes form with an idea or concept. Some artists will sit down
and sketch their ideas on paper to further formulate their concept.
Others will begin by "sketching" their ideas three dimensionally
in clay. For many artists, this is the most inspirational time. This
is when the composition is established and the mood, movement, and
emotion are created giving the sculpture "life". This is
what is most important, not all the detail that will come later. This
is the time when the artist is "interpreting" what he knows
and feels about his subject, and "communicating" that feeling
to the eventual viewer. |
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| The entire creative process may take a week or many
months depending on the size of the work, its complexity, the artists'
familiarity with the subject, and obviously, the amount of time dedicated
to that project. Many artists, myself included, will work on several
projects simultaneously in order to maintain a fresh perspective each
time they touch a piece. |
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When the artwork is completed, Mill Creek's team of
gifted and knowledgeable mold makers take over to create a flexible
rubber mold of the original clay which will capture every detail with
fingerprint accuracy. |
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| During this process, the clay original is damaged and
lost forever. The initial and all important "master" mold
of the original is then used to create subsequent production molds
for the edition castings. |
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| Now, at last! What is it made of? Very simply, each
piece is composed of a blend of fine resins and pure white alabaster,
or alabaster and porcelain powders. When "catalyzed" and
poured into a mold, this resin composition will go through a chemical
reaction creating intense heat and causing the mixture to harden and
expand into every crevasse and detail of the mold. When cooled and
removed from the mold, the result is an exact duplicate of the original
art. |
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At this point each casting is examined, detailed, and
cleaned to prepare the sculpture to receive a natural palette of the
finest artist acrylics applied layer upon layer by skilled artisans.
The beautiful finish which results is designed to enhance and define
all the subtle detail of the artwork, as well as contribute to the
life and realism of the subject. |
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