Art Gallery classes…
“We always seem to sell ourselves short that we don’t have the talent, and actually there’s a foundry two hours away from Swift Current that can cast their work into bronze,” he said. “That’s what I want to keep going with, what I’ve known from the last 35 years by working with Joe. So whatever skills he taught me, I want to keep passing those down and then hopefully we still keep what he built and what I do in the foundry.”
He has been thinking for a while about doing a workshop to introduce people to the foundry, and he was therefore excited about this collaboration with Benning.
“I want to keep casting bronze and it’s a good way to introduce local people that they know about our foundry,” Tremblay said. “So I love it. It’s our first time I’ve done this and I’m actually having a lot of fun and working with good people.”
His advice to course participants were to create their sculptures without thinking about how easy or difficult it might be to cast at the foundry.
“Art is not about making it simpler in production,” he said. “It’s about the artist making the piece they want. I don’t direct the artist what to do. The artist directs me on what to do. It’s called having respect for the artist and that’s where you work from.”
He was going to follow the same approach during the visits of the course participants to the foundry.
“When they come to the foundry, I’m dealing with separate clients,” he said. “They’re each an artist. … Once we make your wax, you have to approve it. Once we have the bronze casted, you have to approve it, and once we do the patina, which is the colouring of the bronze. So they have to like everything. I don’t direct them what to do. I direct my production crew of what the artist wants, but it’s the artist that has the final say.”
Ray Gowan decided to join the class, because he wanted to learn more about the process of bronze casting.
“I’ve watched the videos of Joe Fafard in the foundry going through all these steps and I could never get it straight in my head,” he said. “There’s so many steps to it, mind boggling almost.”
The class was a great experience and he looked forward to visiting the Julienne Atelier foundry in Pense.
“I didn’t have an understanding of how it was done,” he said. “It’s been really interesting. I had no idea we’d get to this stage. It’s really neat.”
He created a sculpture of a cupped hand, in which he will place a glass ball that he created last winter when he participated in a glass blowing class during a trip to Hawaii.
Joan Ortman had no idea what the class was going to be about when she signed up and was curious to discover more.
“It was very interesting and a medium that has not come to Swift Current,” she said. “I’ve dabbled a little bit with taking some pottery classes and a little bit of art a while ago, but nothing as major as this at all.”
She really enjoyed the class, and was surprised by how detailed the process was to create a bronze casting.
“It was phenomenal,” she said about the class. “If they’re going to do it again, I’m signing up again. Now I know the process, and I’ll think a little clearer on what I want to do for a project.”
She had different ideas for a sculpture, but eventually decided to create a gargoyle, which she named Spot.
“I have a gargoyle collection at home that I put out in my garden,” she said. “So I thought that might just be the perfect addition to the set, and it will be one that I created myself rather than going and buying at the store. It will be a very special one.”