Grand kids make great subjects for portrait sculpture

I'm a little prejudice on the subject of depicting these little darlings.  I have been creating childrens' portrait 'heads' and 'busts' for over 40 years.  I have made portraits of some of my collectors grand kids but this is the first time I have worked on my own granddaughters sculpture.  Alexandra and her mother, Caroline have been

Ali sits at my 'Down Under Art Studio' in Portsmouth, NH

coming down to my studio in Portsmouth to sit for Ali's 'head'.  (A portrait 'head' differs from a portrait 'bust' in that the 'head' is sans shoulders and is a bit more informal in it's presentation.) The finished cast 'head' is mounted on a handsome block of marble or hardwood which will appoint the sculpture work. These pictures show the sculpture process about half-way through the sculpting or modeling process. Clay work unlike carving wood or stone which is only subtractive is the process of adding and subtracting; much like painting it allows a lot of subtlety and refinement to the completed work. The 'clay model' then has a negative mother mold made on it. From there a 'cast stone' or 'lost wax bronze' is created.


As you can see my subject doesn't really stay real still or pose
and posing is not really necessary.



I like to work from life, usually 3 or 4 two-hour sessions are all that is required. The sittings are filled in with photo's that I take at different stages of the sculpture. In other cases I work completely from photo's. The duel busts of 2 sisters pictured below was completed only from photographs supplied by my client. Notice the 'polychrome' patina. The 'patina' being the coloration of the sculpture and polychrome indicating a number of various colors. Finishing the sculpture in this way is really a look back to the way the ancients; Greeks would finish their marble carvings and bronze casts. I also could have completed this work in a variety of traditional bronze 'greens' or 'browns' which were typically arrived from by the washing of 'copper nitrate' for blue-green or 'ferric nitrate' for brown. The 'Sisters' are cast in 'stone' which has the advantage of being about half the overall cost of a 'lost wax bronze'.

"Sisters"   Cast Stone     (c) William Barth Osmundsen

Visit my "Down Under Art Studio"
at the
Ben Franklin Block Building
75 Congress St.,
Suite LO2
Portsmouth, NH

Police Gazette on George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen's Fox Voyage

The Fox (c) Wm Barth Osmundsen, Sculptor, Victor Samuelsen, Project coordinator



About a year ago or more the Fox Sculpture Project was in touch with William A. Mays, Editor and Publisher of the 'new' Police Gazette, which is only online at this time.

If you are under 40 you may not remember going into a Barber Shop and fingering through a 'pink paged' tabloid with rather provocative pictures and writings in it. It was a magazine far ahead of Playboy having been published in the mid 1800's. The run of this 'pink press' tabloid lasted until the 1970's. Our particular interest (besides the women displayed in the periodical) is the sponsorship of the 'first transatlantic crossing by oar in an open boat' ; which is the Fox Sculpture Project, presently ongoing and in planning as a bronze monument.

The 'original' publisher (he made it famous after purchasing it from the original owner and was also the one who decided on 'pink pages') of the 'Police Gazette' , Richard Fox was, in fact, a man of diverse interests which ran from promoting some of the great bare knuckle fights which John L. Sullivan participated in to investing in a small row boat which two Norwegian American seamen and fishermen thought they could row some 2000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

I don't really think we can fully appreciate the risk or frankly the organic quality of this whole venture without somehow taking a time machine back to lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Jersey Shore where the FOX (an 18 ft 'Surf boat' was built by William A Seamens, in the Long Branch, NJ area. The film 'Gangs of New York' I believe has some of the grit you might have found then. For instance the last John L. Sullivan, bare knuckle fight went over 100 rounds.

Richard Fox didn't like John L. Sullivan, because Sullivan was rather dismissive of Fox. Actually Fox hoped Sullivan would loose, which he didn't.

Fox sponsored George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen to row across the Atlantic but had little hope the open boat would make it across. His comment to George Harbo who presented the idea was, "What makes you think you can do this other than you have a giant (referring to the 6' 4" Frank Samuelsen) for a partner. He promised them solid gold medals if they accomplished the task.

The excitement surrounding Mr. Mays article, lost for about 100 years, about the Fox voyage is that it is the most complete and comprehensive article documenting the link to the historic crossing, by oar, in an 18 foot open 'Surf Boat by George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen to Richard Fox and the Police Gazette. On our web site BronzeSea.org we have two other articles online both published by the New York Times in 1896.

Here is a link to the Police gazette article and thanks again to the new editor and publisher William Mays for his research and sharing it with all of us. I think it is a great piece of information and we are pleased to add it to the Fox Sculpture Project.

http://bronzesea.org/PoliceGazetteonFOX.aspx

A Visit to the replica of the FOX

THE FOX

This is an exact replica of an 18ft Boat which was rowed

across the Atlantic Ocean in 1896

by George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen.

It is housed at the Long Branch Ice Boat and Yacht Club in

Long Branch, NJ

read more ....

A Visit with the

Long Branch Ice Boat and Yacht Club

The FOX Sculpture Project Continues

October 28, 2008

New Jersey has many faces which it presents to visitors. The Jersey Shore is a one-of-a-kind strip of resort towns that runs about One Hundred Miles down the Jersey Coast. Going ‘down to the Shore’ says it all to Jerseyites, it is a mix of old, new, tacky, glitzy;- big sandy beaches, salt water taffy and every ones destination the day after the high school prom. I drove that southern pilgrimage, living in Northern NJ, for more than 30 years. This year Joe Filipowski, Master Wooden Boat Builder and I headed north out of Virginia Beach, in what was such foul and windy weather that we were turned back at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and had to tow our trailer through the Baltimore and Washington route, taking a nail biting 13 hours, to reach our destination, the Long Branch Ice Boat and Yacht Club, in Long Branch, NJ.

Fishing Villages, like what was Long Branch, thrived in the late 1800’s. A lot of industry, pollution and increased population has changed the active fishing and clamming that brought Harbo and Samuelsen, the two Norwegian Emigrants that rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and are the subjects of the Fox adventure, and my sculpture work.

Long Branch, New Jersey has a close proximity to Manhattan, the lower Battery and Brooklyn where the FOX was launched and Harbo lived as a Sandy Hook Pilot with his family after their Atlantic adventure.

The Long Branch Ice Boat and Yacht Club is tucked away on pretty sheltered harbor and that is where Wooden Boat builder Joe Filipowski and I met up with Victor Samuelsen, Project Coordinator for the Fox Sculpture Project, who also made the rain soaked trip, from Greenwich, CT. We were all greeted by Dick Hauter who is charge of the Fox replica, built to the exact specifications of the original Fox and by wooden boat builder Donald Godshall.

Later the Commodore Tom Bray and a other club members joined us in their cozy eclectic club house which is filled with photographic memorabilia.

Joe Filipowski made a detailed photo essay of the Fox Replica which was housed under it’s own roofed open building display. Joe and I later visited the small boat shop of Donald Godshall who had built the Fox replica under the guidance of Harold Seaman, the son of the original Fox builder who drew out a set of plans from memory at age 90.
Donald Godshall has a great shop with a wood stove,- burning.

It was a warm welcome as it started to snow. With the weather and another nine hours ahead of us we begged off lunch and headed north to New Hampshire to reclaim some studio equipment.

On our return to Virginia, Joe and I will revisit the 3 foot working model which I completed this year and which was displayed at the reopening of Skipjack Nautical Wares in Portsmouth, VA. and construct a more accurate revised boat model using the plans supplied by the Long Branch Ice Boat and Yacht Club and Joe's detailed pictures. This will further refine the sculpture which like most artworks goes through a metamorphose before reaching it's completion.

The new "Voyage of the Fox Sculpture", will be cast in bronze by our

Art n' Gun Studio & Forge in Norfolk, VA.

For purchase and exhibition information e-mail: BILLOSMUNDSEN@aol.com

Have a Happy Holiday Season,

Bill Osmundsen