Bronze act
Cape Town sculptor Nic Bladen casts unique botanicals into bronze, creating artworks he hopes will last as fossils into the future.
“Somehow the orchid fraternity got hold of me.”
It sounds like a plot twist in a floral conspiracy novel, but this was perhaps the turning point in sculptor
Nic Bladen’s career. From making a living creating jewellery (which admittedly was very well received), Bladen was asked by the president of the local orchid society if he would cast a few whole orchids in bronze.
A former dental technician, Bladen had learned about bronze sculpture under the watchful eye of Otto du Plessis at Bronze Age before going on his own.
He’d been struggling along when the orchid request came. “I cast a flower one day and that was it. Lightbulb moment. I’m casting at 0.3mm, but I am also casting tree stumps. It’s a marriage of the disciplines,” says Bladen.
The orchid job successfully executed, the penny dropped about how beautiful organic matter casting can be and he embarked on a botanical path that has taken him to where he is today – exhibiting in Everard Read galleries across South Africa and with a workshop in a heritage building in Simon’s Town.
Simon’s Town, along the Cape Peninsula’s southern side, is a quaint little coastal village. At street level, its architecture, fish ‘n chip shops and pubs are more reminiscent of Cornwall than of anything South African. The similarities end where the town hits the mountain slopes it is built on. Surrounded by the Cape Fold Mountains, the area is covered in indigenous flora – from proteas to buchu and thousands of other species in between. Some common, many rare; this is Bladen’s foraging ground.
His process is relatively simple in concept, but difficult to get right. “I go for a walk, find a plant or get some cuttings, legally, and then it starts with some very simple jewellery moulding practices. In normal jewellery this would be a wax form, something you carved yourself or did in a mould. I mount the cutting and make a mould of it, putting the plant matter into a little cone, slide a metal sleeve over it and fill it up with plaster of Paris. That sets hard, goes into a kiln, bakes for three days and the plant matter burns away. What’s stuck in the plaster mould is a cavity in the shape of those leaves. The ash falls out and when we do the casting, I flip it upside down and I draw a vacuum through the porous plaster of Paris and then I zap metal into the cavity, the mould breaks off and then I have my casting… or not.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work. Things that get in the way include ego and over-confidence. Whenever you think things are going well, a bus hits you. Sometimes a mould cracks, or I get a hole in the mould and once you pour in the metal it falls through the hole and that’s wasted, so it’s just about being mindful of each and every task you undertake. Go slow and do every single move correctly. If you are not there, you have to do it over.”
Working with his two assistants, Bladen has the capacity to produce a small plant a week. The plant will be selected (from the Baskloof Fynbos Reserve in the coastal belt from Misty Cliffs, through the mountains above Scarborough) and cut on a Monday to make the mould. By Wednesday they are casting, by Thursday they have cleaned up the metal and by Friday they can assemble it. With the patination, photography and packaging, it takes approximately six to eight weeks for four pieces. That means Bladen has to go out every week to find plants. His main focus? Proteas and orchids.
“I think there are 361 protea species in Southern Africa so I have got a mobile studio. All my tools fit into my trailer and I can pull this thing into any landscape and pull out my drawer, there’s my oven, there are my vacuum tables and on the other side is a Bunsen burner, and the equipment I need for the foundation work. Then I have a mould. Collectively all I need can fit in a box. I hit the road with all my stuff, Bruhno [his Spinone dog] in tow.”
Many of the plants Bladen is casting are endangered and despite the fact that he is trying to shine a light on their status and the threat of global warming, he also does not want to be accused of collecting plants illegally.
“The first plant I ever did was poached. I had to. It was growing in the middle of a path where people mountain bike. It didn’t stand a chance so it was coming with me,” says Bladen. “Now I don’t just stop and pick stuff on the side of the road, because it’s illegal. If somebody asks me about where the plants come from, I can say, “This came from a privately owned piece of land up near Scarborough where I have permission to harvest. Here’s a photo with the GPS coordinates if you would like to see, here’s my letter and there’s the sticker on my car when I park.”
The big idea is to hitch his trailer, go up to East Africa and cast the flowering proteas of Uganda and then drive south, capturing all of the proteas he can along the way from the eastern escarpment back down to South Africa’s Limpopo province where there are lots of proteas.
“I won’t sell those pieces. Eventually, one day you can have a museum of proteas to be able to say, “this is what they looked like.” There won’t be much scientific value to the world because there won’t be any DNA to work with, but we’ve got the shapes of proteas that are dying because of global warming, that won’t grow again. Same for orchids. There are over 300 species in the Cape alone. I’d like to capture that, have them as a collection, construct a building, the Cape Orchid Museum with another wing for the Natal orchids,” he says. “We’ve got 6000 plant species in the Cape alone to play with. I’ve maybe covered 400 thus far. That’s taken 12 years. I’m 43 now, I’ve got what… 30 years to go?
These plants might not be here in 200 years’ time. There was an amazing photo of a house where everything was burnt to cinders. The only thing left in the house was a bronze sculpture. That’s what could happen with these plants. I’m making metal fossils.”