Carving a Sugar Coated Colossus for Kara Walker

I've been sculpting big things for a long time just as I've worked on some very high profile pieces that have been seen by millions of people. When I was the Chief Sculptor for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade I built what I felt were fairly colossal art works. I've done a number of sculptures that are more than 30' long or, tall. I've worked on dozens of helium inflatables that are as big as this buxom onion with its many layers of meanings and materials but, balloons are entirely a whole other ball of wax. The hard sculptures from which they are patterned represent only 1/24th of the finished products total scale.  This "Subtlety" or "Marvelous Sugar Baby" for Kara Walker stands out in my career as the biggest, most highly publicized project that I have worked on to date. The work began life as a series of drawings and studies by Kara. She would eventually draft and cut out one of her signature silhouettes that would be most conducive to a three dimensional interpretation. At that point Nico Lopez was brought in to create a foam cored clay model that was directed and approved by Kara as this is all about her vision. For myself, my team and all other artists, talent , coordinators, vendors and services involved, this model became our bible. The task that was upon us all was to come as close as humanly possible to creating a radically enlarged replica of the model within a highly restricted allotment of time.

 Kara's sugar coated colossus is 35' tall and 75' long. Her heart shaped posterior rises 27' into the air and she's covered with enough sugar to sweeten millions of cups of coffee. Closer to the point it may beg the question: How many African slaves would have been required to manufacture this product that we would be so promiscuously slathering? She contains more than 330, 4' x 3' x 8' blocks of architectural grade polystyrafoam. It is correct to think of styrafoam as an extremely light material. For this aplication the foam only weighed 1 pound per cubic foot. This project represents 15 tons of it. My crew and I assembled and carved this monument to so many certain injustices particular to the lowest points of humanity in 20 days. We would spend a further 5 days spraying it with thick, sugar stucco through industrial hopper guns, thus lending our hands to Eric Hagen's sugar crew's tremendous task of having to apply 80,000 lbs of the sticky stuff. Their cement mixers never stopped spinning.

I know that 20 days seems impossible but it's a fact. The orchestration that went into this project was as monumental as the piece itself. Art Domantay's crew took a derelict, industrial hulk of a Domino Sugar factory building, 2 football fields long, oozing ponds of viscous black strap molasses and converted it into as civilized a studio as any sculptor could hope as well as what would become a truly magnificent exhibition space. Scores of windows were replaced, skylights fixed, leaks eliminated, electricity, running water etc, etc, etc.... Every tool and, every piece of heavy equipment that was required was provided. If it made sense and sped up the process, it was there. 

Another reason for the speed with which this was made was due to the herculean efforts, considerations and planning that went into figuring all of this out before a single block was laid. Hats off to Jon Lash and the Digital Atelier. The logic of their enlargement process and block mapping was absolutely key in how swiftly we brought this to Kara's expectation.
 If bigger paintings require bigger brushes, so too is the case for bigger sculptures. By my request, every member of my crew was outfitted with their own transformer and a 60'' bow wire. For those who don't know, that's a 5' long hot knife that can lop off hunks of foam as large as major kitchen appliances, in other words, a big freaking tool. Once all of the lop and whittling was done the piece was further refined with massive short bristle wire brushes and sawtooth rasps. The sawtooth rasp is an invention by Tim Daly who was one of the most
important players and coordinator's in this project. His tools would by their efficiency, cut days from the calendar. I would also like to mention that Tim was responsible for assembling and recruiting almost every artist involved with this project. Quite simply, without Tim's recommendation and introductions, I would not have been a part of this monumental work. Truly, a million thanks Tim, I've waited the better part of 30 years to be involved in a project like this.

Though all of the support was superb and every tool and material was correct, in my opinion, what contributed most to the speed and success of this sculpture itself was the heart and soul of every member of my team. Not an idle moment known by any of them, not an ounce of energy or intelligence in this was unexpended or withheld. All charged onto this battle field holding high their rasps and swinging their wire bows tirelessly till the campaign was carried out to a success that is being celebrated around the world. Gigantic thanks to the sculptors who were in this seemingly impossible quest with me: Brian Comisky, Lena Takamori, Matt Mikas and Ryan J. Clark and of course the most enormous thanks to Kara Walker, without whose genius, relevant importance, initiative and inspiration, none of this would have been and to Creative Time for granting Kara this commission and giving me the opportunity of leading a great sculpting team in the creation of the largest work that I've ever put my hand to.

The show opened to the public May 10th and will run till July 6, Fridays 4-8pm, Saturday & Sundays 12-6pm at the Domino Sugar Factory, South 1st Street  and Kent  Avenue, Williamsburg Brooklyn

To see this project from start to finish, please click HERE

To see some of the best press photos, please click HERE

To see Creative Time's production team credits please click HERE

To see news articles on this piece please click HERE

To see Art21 documentary on this piece please click HERE

To see Wall Street Journal video on this piece please click HERE

Sand Castle Video Cabinet and Play Tables

A Great artist once said "Castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually". I say, not if they're carved from EPS and coated with an isocyanate polyurethane resin...and installed a fair enough distance from the ocean. Immediately upon the completion of the Dolphin Sofa for SFDS, I went to work on these sand castles. While the basic geometry of these pieces seemed simple enough, their textures demanded a lot of time and attention.

Once the basic shapes were assembled, and the television monitor was properly fitted, all 3 pieces required staggered block patterns. This represents a lot more work than many would guess. The patterns were first measured and drafted over the majority of the surfaces. In the case of the tables, all sides required detail, where as the video cabinet has a smooth back. The drafted patterns were then hot scored into the surfaces and all of the pieces were tied together and further textured with joint compound before hard coating and paint treatments were applied.

The play tables center spaces were filled with sand and sea shells and topped with glass and plexi. The video cabinet was not only fitted with a 52"monitor but an Xbox and other ancillary digital goodies. The sunglass on the far end of this shot sport double monitors (the shades were cut on the CNC machine, I merely glued the parts together and rounded the edges). All of the wonderful stools and beach ball chairs were designed and fabricated by SFDS. In the end an incredible childrens play space was created, one that will host and inspire much joy and laughter for many years to come.

I'd like to further thank Eric Winston and SFDS for providing me with and allowing my use of their images of the pieces installed in their intended environments. Every aspect of working with this fine studio was a pleasure and a privilege. I happily look forward to my next projects with them.

Dolphin Sofa

This first image is the Zbrush model rendered with Keyshot. The following 4 images show the 10"long Shapeways SLS 3d print. As you can see, it's a remarkably true to the model. It does however, have a bit of a tooth to it. Shapeways offers this material polished in a tumbler but, that process is reserved for print outs that are 200mm (about 7.5") or, less. 

 Sofas and couches come in all shapes and size but, this was a new one for me. I was contacted by Eric Winston, owner of SFDS, a fantastic, 15,000 square foot scene fabrication/design studio in the heart of Greenpoint Brooklyn. Eric needed among some other wonderful elements, a 10’ long, hand carved dolphin sofa for the Marriott Vacation Club in Newport Coast CA. I jumped at the chance. I’d been wanting to do a crazy sofa for as long as I could remember. I’ve done all sorts of crazy chairs, tables, cabinets and beds for as long as I’ve been sculpting but, in all of the that time, never a sofa. Eric cleared a huge room for me to sculpt it in. His excellent fabrication staff built a hotwire table for me from no more than one of my napkin sketches and boom, it began.

Half way into the carve, Eric's studio was visited by Mario Marsicano from Jellio. I've worked with Jellio on a number of interesting projects. I knew that Eric did projects with Jellio but, I didn't know that the sofa was one of them. There were so many diverse projects going on in the studio at the time, 2 major stage sets, a big job for instagram, giant wooden dinosaur assemblies, all sorts of different furniture designs, as far as I knew I was sculpting Eric and the Marriott. Finding out that this was for Jellio once my hands were already deeply into it was an additional bonus. For more with Jellio, click on the following links.
Gummi King
Ice Cream That You Can Sit On
King Kong

Eric's 5 year old angel, Ella.

 The above images show the sofa from various angles, carved, filled and ready for hard coating. The project progressed at a very fast rate due in largest part to my having figured out the sculpture in Zbrush. I have always done models in the past for larger sculpts. The luxury of doing models in Zbrush, as opposed to a more traditional clay approach is that you end up with a model that is not only more easily editable but, all of my build elevations were derived from it as well. The elevations were simply projected onto the block from different sides and the sculpture was immediately roughed out, top to bottom, side to side, front to back.

An astute eye may notice that the sofa against the grid only measures 9'. In order to increase the seating area, during the projection, the length of the sofa would be stretched to 10'. As a result, everything changed a bit but, all for the better. In a very long career, this was well worth the wait. In the wonderful world of fanciful furniture, this is an example as fabulously fun as you could hope to fathomably find.

Office/Bed Room

In an earlier post about Sonia's loft, I wrote about the psychological damage that can be wrought by making your child sleep in something other than a bedroom and, what that might do to her self esteem. I'm sure that in many situations these may be seriously legitimate concerns but, to be honest, I was just having some tongue in cheek fun. I am reminded of a man I knew. His quandary was about; weather or not to circumcise his new born son. On one hand, he felt that at it's core, circumcision was a barbaric primitive ritual of mutilation designed more to be a mark or a branding to identify and differentiate their tribes of peeps and, in so doing, hopefully remain unadulterated by those who chose to believe something different. How well has that worked? He further went on to scoff over the health benefits of circumcision as it was a practice begun more than 5,000 years before any true, evidential science or real medical knowledge existed on this planet. On the other hand, he earnestly worried about the possibilities of his son being irreparably screwed up by identity crisis issues as he grew older...Why doesn't my penis look like dad's. It must be an impossible thing to explain to a two year old and how will it manifest it's self when puberty rears its throbbing head? Though the comparative of primitive male genital alteration(think sharp stones or, sea shells when they began doing this) and making your kid sleep in the kitchen may seem on the opposite end of the parenting spectrum, there are clear parallels. As for those concerns, I had none as in building Sonia's loft, I had created for her a baby bear version of the papa bear configuration. She was delighted.



Among the many reasons I have for loving my apartment, it's consistent saving grace has been its ceiling height. Though the apartments plan is just 400 square feet, by it's ceiling height it has a 600 square foot apartment's equivalent of cubic foot volume. Fully realizing its value, I've tried tried to exploit it where ever I could. As a result, objects and art work rise to almost every wall's tallest dimension.
When I first took the apartment the loft existed as an opened platform that was strangely an inch and a half shy of being wide enough for a queen size mattress. Fixing that issue of width was as easy as an extra 2"x4" upon which I screwed a length of 2' plywood shelving so as to create the blind. The blind not only serves to prevent me from rolling out of  bed to the certain probabilities of being killed or crippled, it also gave me a perfect wall to hang the Ichthyosaur fossil. Some might feel that the visual pun of sleeping with the fishes, a la Luca Brasi may be a bit on the ominous side of macabre but, to sleep like the dead is only meant to describe a deep and undisturbed slumber. And, perhaps one needs to remember, the Ichthyosaur isn't really a fish.



Access to my loft is by what an old girl friend coined as the sladder (part stair, part ladder). I pried it from the wall to which it was attached and moved it a foot further toward the center of the room so as to create an extra 2 square feet of platform. In a small space those couple of square feet may often represent the difference between awkward and comfortable. Moving the sladder did eat 2 square feet of floor but it gave me an extra 10 cubic feet of storage. That may not sound like a hell of a lot for all of the effort but, in a tiny pad with only one real closet, it's a hallelujah moment. The trade off was a no brainer, 2 wins to one loss.
My office is in what was once a dressing area and closet. My desks are made out of same re-purposed shelving as Sonia's. Beneath my computer, the floor is a block of stone baring evidence that in its earliest iteration, I would be sitting in front of where the stove once was.

About my bones; I am not ghoul. I inherited these bones from my dad. He had a real appreciation for their shapes and nuances. Having studied anatomy I loved them as well. I find the divergence of their morphologies stunning. I think that most figurative sculptors have a bone thing going on. In fact one of Henry Moore's  most prized and inspirational objects was an elephant's skull. The prize of this fleet is the human skull. My dad told me that she was 1,500 years old but, didn't know where she came form. She lived to be approximately 28 years old and remarkably has all of her teeth. Before she died she went blind. Evidence of this is found in a large convex deformation on the left side of the occipital plate. The brain tumor that would eventually kill her blinded her first by its origin in the part of the brain reserved for vision. My dad used to call her Alice. I have no idea why? Who was Alice? What did the name mean to him? Was she a lost love? Was she a woman for whom he had affection or, loathing? Alive or lost, another mystery about my dad, another thing that I'll never know.
 If you possess an ostio-intrigue or are bent to the point of paleo-curiosity, most of my specimens can be found for surprisingly reasonable prices at uptown N.Y.C.'s Maxilla Mandible, just north of the American Museum of Natural History or, down town at Evolution. They are both absolutely fascinating stores.

Interestingly, for all of the objects that this small room holds, very little is actually on the floor, 2 chairs(one carved from an Indonesian Teak root ball), a dresser and the space beneath my desk tops which is mostly used as storage for guitar cases.

La Bocca Della Verita Green Man Hybrid

My Father had a propensity for collecting odd artifacts and nick nacks, some extremely fine, some extremely not. Among his marvelous menageries was a reproduction of a Green Man keystone. He told me that it was the mouth of truth and if a person put their hand in it's mouth and told a lie, the sculpture would bite off the hand. It was an intriguing tale that made an intriguing object more intriguing. Years later, I decided to make a larger version that would take up a greater piece of wall and perhaps imbued with a greater capacity to detect bigger lies. The piece pictured here is 4 feet tall, carved from Styrofoam and coated with joint compound.

As it turned out, a number of cities during the middle ages employed similar carved quasi contraptions to rat out wrong doing and doers. It was a cowardly snitchy thing, a means by which accusations could be cast anonymously to the authorities. I'm sure that this thing must have screwed up the lives of many innocently accused while protecting the anonymity of many atrocious liers. Its quite the twist on its original intention.

When Leonardo was a very young man, he fell prey to such a device. Some one employed a similar mouth to accuse him of consorting with a younger male prostitute. Florence was reputed for being pretty gay back then. It's no big wonder. There are penises everywhere you look. One might call the town penis proud with its plethera of pollished peckers poised for presentaion. Gay or straight matters not, the fact is that Florence is littered with statues of fully frontal male nudes. Be that as it may, being found gay back then was often punishable by death. In the end Leonardo was vindicated though the allegation was probably true. It makes me shutter to think that the world could have been deprived of one of the greatest minds by such an ultimately stupid thing.

At the time that I had carved this, I had never seen Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, a movie by which the Bocca Della Verita became most famous. In my post carving research I've found that it was not a keystone but, rather, most probably first intended as a manhole cover.

There is more. To learn the legend further and, find out how the stone's power came to pass, please click HERE

Guitar Stand

Once upon a time, I bought a guitar believing that I might actually be able to learn how to play it. I didn't but, I was so enamored of it's shape that I was compelled to carve the  lively, funky stand seen in this photo. Years went by. A dear friend asked if I would like to give learning guitar a try once more. I jumped at his kind offer and became addicted. Learning guitar introduced me to multitudes of musicians and many aspects of my life have been forever transformed in the process. If it were not for this stand, carved at a time when I didn't know a note, my life would be very different.

Chinese Dragon

The Chinese Dragon pictured here is easily the largest single foam carving that I'd ever had my hands in. It was created for the Fun Town Splash Town amusement park in Sacco Maine. I based the design on a China town bit of kitche, a small, resin dragon statuette with exceptionally good details. The back was perfectly arched so as to serve as a portal through which park goers would enter the attraction. Aptly named Dragon's Descent,  you're strapped into it's specialized seats and harness system and the 220' tall tower slowly begins carrying you aloft to one of the highest and most majestic panaramas in all of Maine, before brutally hurtling you downward at speeds greater than the gravitational pull of the earth could achieve without the colossal, maniacal mechanical assistance of this terrifying towers sadistically concocted inner workings. I cut off the statuette's head and turned it inward to face the guests whom would be passing under it's belly. Once the model had been modified, it was photographed and 1/12 scale drawings were made from those photos. The drawing were then projected onto 3/4" plywood. The shapes would be cut from the plywood and the plywood was scabbed together and joined by flanged steel pipes to serve as 2' wide hollow, structural core, upon which would be mounted a total of 36 2' x 2' x 8' EPS foam blocks for carving. The dragon was so large that it had to be designed in 4 sections that would be craned together on site. In fact, it required 2  40' flat bed trailers to safely transport its separated components to the park. The full sculpture would be 18.5' tall, 32' long and 12' wide. It's eyes and throat glowed crimson red with inner lamps as smoke would billow out of it's nostrils and mouth via Rosco smoke machines and an inventive PVC plumbing system. The dragon also had a sound box with a proximity switch inside of it, allowing the dragon to growl as guests approached. A lavish Chinese garden was planted as the attraction's setting to complete the visual spectacle.

This story wouldn't be complete without a word on Maine lobster. Everything that you've heard is true. It is orgasmic. We were tied to the installation for the better part of that week and enjoyed lobster rolls every day for lunch. There was simply nothing better. On our last day we went to a local lobster shack right on the water. The lobster was so fresh that we had speculated that it was being pulled in fresh from the shack's kitchen window. I had a lobster bisk, velvety red with roe, so thick and rich and chock full of lobster that my spoon  actually stood up in it. That course was followed by a "Lazy Man's" lobster, which consisted of 2lbs. of shelled lobster claws and tails in an earth ware bowl that had been broiled in a bath of butter and bread crumbs to beyond what mere mortals could describe as perfection. There is a heaven. My taste buds call it Sacco Maine.

Horton

Being my age, I had the luxury of growing up with Suess & Sendak. So did my daughter and it's my hope that children do for as long as there are children but, I grew up as these books were just hitting the book store shelves. At that time most of my toys were made out of wood or metal. I think that the quality of a toy may have been determined by how much injury it could inflict upon another child if it should be used as a weapon. I remember my father telling me that when he was a child he knocked out his little sisters front teeth with a toy fire engine. Those were the days, when toys were toys and child psychology didn't exist. If I'm to believe my pop's story, my grandfather put his cigar out on my pop's prepubescent nose for his dastardly dental deed.
 Of all of Dr. Suess's characters, Horton was the one that most impressed me. To my young mind he was as big as a T Rex but he was gentle and kind and generous to a fault. He meant what he said and he said what he meant and his mind was opened to possibilities out side of his norm, 100 percent. Imbued with those fine qualities, I thought that he would make a great sample and studio mascot. I carved Horton using a tiny Christmas ornament as my reference. Ear to ear he may have been an inch and a half across. As he hangs on my wall he's five feet wide.

Little Airstream

A seriously fun project for an amusement park attraction, entirely carved from 1lbs. EPS., including the wheels and tires. It was very easy to dream variations on these happy simple shapes. I would have loved to have built a mold of this and cast a Fiberglas shell that could be bolted to a landscape trailer. In the bottom photo, I wanted to present the door both opened and closed. When the 2 photos were together, they were so close in terms of color balance and exposure that I couldn't help but, to join them as one.

Cephalopod

An 18 foot long, 24 inch thick, polyurethane hard coated, carved, spackled and sanded, EPS foam cephalopod, painted with purple polka dots, a perfect complement to any Christmas window display.

New Michael Ferrari-Fontana Website

Finally finished...for now. The new website is pretty comprehesive. I've taken all of the best images and information from all of the sites and blogs that I've built in the past and combined them in one place. It's full of new artwork and stories. Everything is explained, linked, easy to navigate and for the first time in my art career, I'm using my full name. Please click HERE to vistit michaelferrarifontana.com

Sculpture Chair 4

One of the most rewarding aspects of creating abstract compositions is free association. As I assembled this image I thought about banyon roots and tangled forests and what mysteries may lurk beneath and behind the bark clad bars and beams. I found myself drifting through medieval notions of folklore's irrational fears and Hieronymus Bosh's garden of earthly delights. The skewed matrix of limbs and branches became tendrils and then nerves bundles, steering me toward pharmaceutical illustrations and animations of neuro path ways and the "Incredible Journey". The nerves became columns merging seamlessly into groinless vaults and, as they did I found it reflexively natural to imagine this setting populated by people and creatures. I could almost hear musical strains, wafting and swelling through one oval opening only to be pulled through another and then gently diminished. There is so much strange dreaming in such an abstraction, especially when one considers, at it's heart, the sole component in this image is only a chair. For more photos of this in a more easily understood context please click HERE.

Parabolic Facade

Twisting geometry always seems to toss the spectator through a loop. That's why it's so much fun but, it's also a reason to flog ones noggin whilst figuring out the next bend. What wasoriginally proposed as a flat with forced perspective ended up becoming an issue of bisecting, decreased radii. Sound tricky? It is. To further add challenge, This project was done without drawings. A crude but, elegant 1/12 scale model served as the only guide. This object was essentially done on the fly and with a crazy, tight dead line to boot. It bends both longitudinallyand vertically in order to achieve it's parabolic concavity. The upper arches were cut out toaccommodate pneumatically actuated puppets and, as if this wasn't complicated enough, the entire fabrication was designed to mount flushly, via birds mouth, to a convex parabolic shape. The finished construct was both formal and funky and weighed in at under 30 lbs. For more on this project please click HERE