Body Casting Kim for American Beauty | developing the image

Finding a pose

Taking photos of Kim in order to create a proposal image.

Proposal Image

The American Beauty proposal image finished with a little help from Photoshop.

First Sketches of American Beauty

Beginning body cast of Kim

Establishing magic marker seam lines for plaster bandage body cast.

Body Cast Team Prepping

Help from Christie Hackler, Christie Owen, Sue Sullivan, & Jackie Jones (not shown; she's taking the picture) model Kim far right.

Ready for bandages

Bandages going on

Seam lines are built into the cast by following the magic marker guides.

Strengthening the Mold

adding wooden support sticks to help the body cast maintain the correct shape.

Attaching Stiffeners

Jackie Jones & Christie Hackler strengthening the attachment points of the stiffeners.

Setting up

We've got enough layers on now, we just need to let the plaster gain strength for a few minutes before disassembly.

Time to start removing mold sections

Clean up time

Done for the day. Time to clean up.

Reassembly

We begin reassembling the cast immediately, otherwise the sections will warp out of shape and not go together easily.

The final touches

We make sure the interior mold sections align as closely as possible.

Interior

The bottom half is finished.

Christie Owen working on Ground Plane

This template will establish the point the figure meets the ground.

Christie fine tuning the template

Demolding Foam Positive

Demolding and cleaning up the foam positive that was poured into the plaster bandage mold.

Continued Demolding

Continued demolding and cleaning up the foam positive.

Template support platform

Jose Rodriguez working on Ground Plane

This artificial ground plane will determine where to trim the excess from the positive.

Legs trimmed

life size positive finished

This life-size positive will be scanned and digitally enlarged in 2 lb. density styrofoam.

Ready for scanning

American Beauty patina time

2012 66” x 240 x 83 bronze edition of 5

American Beauty

2012 66” x 240 x 83 bronze edition of 5

The Foundry Crew at Pyrology

2012 66” x 240 x 83 bronze edition of 5

American Beauty at foundry

2012 66” x 240 x 83 bronze edition of 5

An Ardmore, Oklahoma art collector contacted Phelps about commissioning a double life-size bronze of herself similar to Nancy. During an extended studio visit, she expressed what she was looking for in the sculpture that she wanted to install next to the swimming pool at her new Los Angeles home. Armed with this information, Phelps enlisted Kim to pose for some photographs for a proposal. After purchasing a different large scale sculpture from Phelps, the collector eventually decided not to go forward with the commission but Phelps was so pleased with the proposed image that he sent it out to his art galleries. He quickly got a call back from art dealer Matt Vickers asking if it was possible to sculpt this four times life size rather than double life size. A Houston couple loved the image, wanted it for their new Florida beach home, wanted it based on the same model, and wanted it four times life size. Phelps was able to get Kim back to the studio for body casting in order to make that happen. The entire process is outlined in the image galleries above. American Beauty is sculpted in two different sizes, The twenty four feet long sculpture is in an edition of 5 bronzes and the forty inch long version is in an edition of 35 bronzes.