Happy New Year!!!

by Tom McClelland on January 3, 2012

Wishing all of us the happiest of New Years with new metal to pour and weld and shape into new concepts. I just received some rough castings from Leif Dillow, owner of Old School Bronze, and these, along with some stainless steel forms I’ve been welding up, will be combined into new work! I’m considering, among other ideas,a variation on the “House of Cards” sculpture I created about two years ago. I was never very happy with that sculpture, so I cut it apart and had Leif melt the figure down to recycle it into these new castings. New life for old stuff!

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Intuition

by Tom McClelland on December 14, 2011

plaster study for upcoming sculpture

I just returned home from a trip to the San Diego area, and have an experience that has stuck with me: I was talking with the my niece at the table at breakfast about how “non-linear” my approach to life has been, when the waiter interrupted me to anonunce that logic and the mathematics involved in that discipline was paramount, and what did I know, after all, about philosophy? (He, is a philosophy major in college, and thus an expert, or so he said.) Having been a teacher for many years, I’m used to interruptions of all sorts, so waived it all aside, but this young man would do well to have listened to the context in which I presented logic as I was trying to explain my intuitive repsonses to linearity in life’s unfolding puzzle.

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Rushmore strikes again!

December 1, 2011

I just finished another in an on-going series of mixed-media drawings inspired by my working as the Sculptor-in-Residence at Mt. Rushmore National Monument in the summer of 1987. Along with my stone carving and interpretation work, I spent time researching the history of the monument, and have always felt a need to document the workers [...]

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Natural forms

November 25, 2011

If you look closely at the photos with the last blog entry, you will notice a very sinuous “stick” form towards the bottom of the “Ann’s Room” sculpture. This particular form is a reproduction, in bronze, of the trunk of a sagebrush plant. Sagebrush is an indigenous plant here in eastern Washington State and I [...]

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“Ann’s Room”

November 10, 2011

So, now that the big piece is installed in Tacoma, I’m getting a little time, before starting on another big project, to catch up on more personal work. The latest, which I just photographed today, has a working title “Ann’s Room” and is dedicated to my wife, Ann Steiger. The composition is of cast bronze [...]

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Touchdown!

October 19, 2011

Saturday, the 15th, we installed the”Life’s a Puzzle” sculpture at Curtis High School in University Place, Washington. As I watched, and held my breath that the piece would fit properly on all 16 bolts, there came that wonderful sound of touchdown/contact with the concrete pad, and I could breathe again! This is the culmination of [...]

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Installation here I come!

October 10, 2011

“Life’s a Puzzle” is finally completed and ready for installation in University Place, just outside Tacoma, Washington. We are planning to install this coming Saturday. Last week, I worked with Leif Dillow, owner of Old School Bronze doing the patina coloring and preparing the sculpture for installation. He will be transporting the piece and we [...]

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Keep building!

September 21, 2011

Work on the “Life’s a Puzzle” piece for University Place School District continues at T. Hunter Bronze foundry in Walla Walla. We now have all the internal stainless steel pipe and all the figurative elements together, along with everything welded to the stainless steel mounting plate. I will be returning to work with Trevor and [...]

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Progress!

September 12, 2011

I was over at T. Hunter Bronze foundry in Wall Walla yesterday working with Trevor (the owner) and his assistants putting together some of the cast sections of “Life’s a Puzzle” piece. As you can see, the sculpture is coming into focus. It’s exciting, for me to finally touch the bronze after so many months [...]

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Possibilities

September 1, 2011

Along with the on-going work on the large bronze entitled “Life’s a Puzzle,” for Curtis Jr/Sr High School, I am currently working with Washington State University on a proposed piece for their Tri-City campus. This sculpture will be cast bronze, about 8 feet in height, and will be dedicated to the veterans who attend WSU, [...]

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