David Phelps

"Sisyphus Over St Helena"

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Loading, traveling & installing “Sisyphus Over St Helena” at the Jeffrey Miller estate in Napa Valley

Loading, delivering, and installing sculpture. From Oklahoma City to St Helena, Napa Valley, California.

iMac fixit morning

My optical drive likes the last DVD I burned so much that it won't give it up. It took awhile to figure out that the drive had died.  So today I'm a techie.  

First thing was to order a new optical drive as well as a bare hard drive docking station.

The hard drive in this iMac was fine but it was only 750 GB and I have a couple of new empty 2TB sea gates laying around, so, while I've got the thing apart I might as well put the new bigger drive in.

I downloaded a copy of Carbon Copy cloner and cloned the internal hard drive to the new seagate drive.  Then I cleaned my desk.
Ready to disassemble

Use suction cups to pull the front glass off

Off it comes

Good opportunity to clean the grime under the glass

Removing the screen exposes the guts

old optical drive out

Both new drives ready to go in

Almost back together

Success!! Back up and running
 OK, now back to work and off to the OVAC's 12x12 fundraiser tonight.

"American Beauty" mold making finished!!!!

The final day of mold making on "American Beauty" by the Deep in the Heart crew.

They got here on Wednesday, worked 17 hour days for 4 days, and left Sunday morning having finished a high quality silicon rubber mold of a 4 X life-size sculpture titled "American Beauty."
They loaded up the 81 separate mold sections on their trailer as well as a couple of my large sculptures that Clint will take to his gallery in Austin, Texas.

They left my studio cleaner than when they got here. ( I was very happy about that)

The next step in the "American Beauty" process is casting waxes into the mold sections. This will be done at the Deep in the Heart foundry in Bastrop, Texas (just outside of Austin)

more to come.........

Mold making crew (+ me)


plaster mother mold cont....



building the mother mold flanges


mother mold pretty much finished

getting ready to stencil mold IDs on each section

beginning to stencil


finished with stenciling


Clint drilling alignment holes in mother mold


first mold section being removed

off comes the mother mold section









cleaning up the rubber mold sections

removed mold sections layed out




50 mold sections on the torso alone


matching rubber to mother molds





mold almost completely removed



Patty helped match rubber to mother mold sections

mold removal done, loading the trailer


Early Saturday evening

beginning to load mold




Gary strapping down "Paradise"

Beginning studio clean up

rolling up tarp



moving torso off the tarp



Tarp is rolled up with all the debris 


Tarp went directly to the dumpster





early Sunday morning; ready to roll back to Austin


So long!!


Mold making begins on "American Beauty"

I finished sculpting "American Beauty" today. I know I finished because Clint Howard brought his crew from Deep in the Heart Art Foundry and started mold making. 

David L Phelps
This is it; I have to stop now

Laying down floor protection

She's finally ready to go

Creating an efficient work space



using playing cards for the shim lines




Gary joining the playing cards with masking tape






If you knock one card down they all fall like dominos


Shimming is finished on the legs, some of the crew moves on to shim the torso while Clint demonstrates how to apply silicon rubber on the legs.













































Work is progressing well on American Beauty. Jose Rodriguez is up from Austin offering invaluable help in getting this piece finished with the attention to detail that I'm looking to achieve. I'm also getting great help from Christie Hackler and Christie Owen.
American Beauty

Red Head bad boy put back into service today
to make another 160 lbs of oil clay

Jose Rodriguez working on the hair

Jose Rodriguez working on the hair

Going over mig welding theory with Christie Owen

Christie admiring the pattern

Cutting steel panels with the plasma cutter

Cutting steel panels with the plasma cutter

Going over process

Christie cleaning up the panels with the Dewalt

Getting that steel sliver out

Inspection

Demonstrating interior welding

Sunday studio work


Working on Sunday with Christie Owen and Jose Rodriguez.  Sculpting on American Beauty and getting some pieces patinated to ship out to Whistler Village Art Gallery and to a private collector.




sandblasting

 heating up the Oarsman
patina notes and chemicals








Spraying Lacquer

finished "Dive"

finished "Oarsman"