How I Sculpt with Wax to Create Fluidity

Recently I had the honor of creating a one-of-a-kind sterling silver charm for the Stay Gold Collective, a group of independent jewelers. The charms celebrate our connection to community. This was an exciting challenge for me since I normally work at a much larger scale when sculpting bold statement pieces. I remembered to grab a few photos of my concepting process to share and thought you might enjoy learning a little about how I landed on the fluid style I now use in my work.

When I first started exploring making wearable sculpture about three years ago, I played with strips of paper to see how many unique little shapes I could make with a continuous strip. Once I landed on a bunch of these I translated them into metal using strips of sheet metal. From there I recreated the shapes in wire. Here are a few photos of my early explorations:

I found I enjoyed working in the round (a nod to my fine arts background) and it was a natural progession to working with wax to allow for more experimentation and expressiveness. I began creating pieces with strips of sheet wax that I would use to sketch in space. After taking a lost wax casting class where I learned how far I could push the material, I began honing my wax sculpting technique. 

I normally start by creating a wax sketch where I explore the sweet spot between intention and spontaneity. I will often reference this sketch when I sculpt the piece itself, using strips of sheet wax that I smooth on wood mandrels, spreading the wax to varying thicknesses with the warmth and pressure of my hands, cutting away areas with a blade. Because of the size limitations of sheet wax, I will carefully join strips together until I have one continuous length that I manipulate to find my form.

When the initial casting comes back to me, the piece often goes through another round of transformation. I will anneal the metal (heating it with a torch until it softens) and manipulate it further by bending it, filing it, and sanding it until the final form reveals itself.

For the Stay Gold Collective charm I was thinking about how to represent Unity, Community, and Vibrancy. I remembered my initial metal sculptures from back in the day and found a shape I really loved that captured the energy I was looking for. It was over 3" so I did another sketch in wire reducing the size further before creating a wax sketch in the 1" size I was aiming for. 

Here's a photo showing the progression from the 3" wire sculpture to the finished charm: 

I surprised myself that I really enjoyed working at this much smaller scale. I plan on doing more experimentation at this size, incorporating stones in unexpected ways.

What do you think of this smaller sized work? Let me know in the comments!