Sunday, July 24, 2011

First week

Aug 7





Bong Soo removed a lot of stone to get to his basic form, now he is begining to shape it. It is already starting to get dark, 9:00pm and still working. We were finished by 9:3o though so only a little more than 12 hours today.




Li Chao has also removed a lot of stone, his marble is yellow with salmon colored streaks. I think it is going to polish nicely.





Amgalan's assistant and wife Manda, she is very nice and helps out around the site as well as assisting Amgalan.







Jiang Chu's piece is really taking shape, really it has been coming along steadily but today we stood it up and you can easily recognize the basic image I think.
August 5




Min arrived on Wed and began working on his stone Thursday morning so he is a week behind everyone else. He cut the base flat on the first day, we stood it up today. He is beginning to work at removing material on the sides, his is the largest stone at about 24,000 lb!



Bong Soo also has a very large stone, about 22,000 lb. He has removed a lot of stone with the big saw, now he is drilling to remove another large piece that will wiegh about 3,000 or 4,000lb.
First Week
Aug 28 RDC hosted an opening ceremony before work began. Red deer Mayor, Morris Flewelling and College President Joel Ward spoke to the group that attended, welcoming the sculptors. After lunch we began to make stone dust. Each evening some of the sculptors are working, sometimes until 9pm or so which makes a long day of it for all of us.
On Tuesday a long black limosine arrived to take the group on their first expedition in Alberta, to the sculpture park in Bergen. My nieghbor, Ed Stacy took them for a wagon ride behind a team of beautiful Norwegian Fjord horses. On the way through Sundre we stopped at A&W for Teen Burgers, some thought root beer tastes funny.
Stone has arrived
The stone has arrived and been placed in the working area at RDC. Three shipping containers of marble (three types) and one block of basalt are now on site. In the next three days I have to get all of the equipment up to the site, Elements at River's Edge is providing a cargo trailer to serve as the tool crib, that will really be handy. Two sculptors arrive on Tuesday, four on Wednesday and one Thursday afternoon. Opening ceremonies take place before the work begins Thursday morning. The next few days are going to be really busy for everyone, it's exciting to know that we will be cutting stone in less than a week's time.