A New Home

So to continue the series of me working at the art foundry, we last left off with me having to go to the mold room. The mold room was in a seperate building from the other buildings. It contained the mold room and the wax room and mold storage. When new sculptures would come in, it gets dropped off in the mold room for us to prepare and get ready to make mold of them. Artist would make the originals from almost anything. Mostly clay, platicine and plaster. Clay was hard, cause it is water based and you need to make sure that you get rubber on it quickly. With the other two, you have to prep the surface so that the rubber doesn't adhere to the surface and you never being able to get it off.

But i jump ahead of myself. i should talk about first going up there. I go up and there is only one guy up there, Kevin. He was short staffed and needed help and was willing to teach me in order to get any help he could get. He had been making molds for a long long time and at other another foundry as well. When you look at Kevin, you think that you had stepped back into the late 70's or early 80's. He had dirty blond hair, those bigger glasses that was worn in those days, long fu manchu that was very unkempt. He smoked like a fiend as well. it was almost a joke in the room on how much he smoke was a meter on how the day was going. He was also the kind of guy that complains. Now we all complain, but this is a constant. He will complain about anything. Just a bitter guy who lives by himself in the middle of nowhere.

So I am up there for 2 days just me and him. Despite the complaining and stuff, which doesn't drive you mental at first cause you are concentrating on the job at hand and trying to remember what you steps were, there was a great difference in the rooms. It was nice. He wasn't caddy and back stabbing. He was just miserable with himself. The music in the room was a local college station, which was good and found that he listened to a lot of similar music as me, so we had that to talk about. It was nice. We could open the two bay doors at both ends and have a cross breeze. The attitude was laid back and open. I didn't feel as though i had to watch my back. I was happy and content. Plus the fact that i was learning something new helped as well. I also wanted to see who else worked up there.

I was in love. I loved my the process way more than wax and i loved getting dirty with the plaster and rubber and clay. I think even to this day i still love mold making. I wish i had more reason to do it, but still, it was a great skill to learn. This is where i have most of my stories, so I will go into them more with each person.