Art of the Week: Aluminum Casting

I did something new today, so I'm posting it as art of the week now at the beginning of the week rather than at the end.

A friend of mine invited me to her sculpture class today for a sand casting demo. We made bas-relief sculptural pieces so we could make impressions of them into the casting sand to then pour aluminum into. I created two pieces: one made by working directly into the sand to create texture (I had no idea what this would look like until after it was completely done), and another somewhat Cthulu-esque tentacled creature which I sculpted in positive and then made a negative impression of within a mold. After the aluminum was poured and cooled I went over my cast sculptures with a steel wire brush to clean them up some, but I didn't really work the surface as I rather like the rough, unpolished treatment.

I'd never done any sort of metal casting before, and it was very interesting and educational. I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to try it and grateful to have been included. It was a lot of fun and a totally new experience.