[gentle relaxing music] [water trickling]
Baker is like a little enclave in the middle
of this beautiful Eastern Oregon landscape.
I took a tour of Oregon,
and I was just really enamored with it.
I just love the people and the community.
And so, I acquired this property 10 years ago.
It took me about two years to rehab
this beautiful old building.
My home is upstairs, it's large loft.
And downstairs in the front is my gallery and showroom.
And we're in my painting studio right now.
And then, over a few yards that way
is where I work on bronze.
[gentle relaxing music]
NARRATOR: From painting, to printmaking,
to pottery, to bronze,
artist Robert Anders does a little bit of everything.
I've been in the arts for all my adult life.
I like the idea of innovation and making new things,
and that heartfelt feeling of producing something beautiful.
[gentle relaxing music]
I love to stand outside and paint
and observe the big, beautiful world.
Being outside is really the primary thing.
And then painting is just kind of a secondary excuse
to get outside and be in it.
[rain pattering]
NARRATOR: But since this isn't exactly the best day
for that, we asked Robert to show us how he makes bronze.
[torch roaring]
People have been working in bronze for thousands of years.
I just love the tensile strength,
but so tactile and so heavy and so just durable.
And it has its own kind of vibrational energy.
[bronze ringing]
So it's just a very fun material to work with.
My bronze work is primarily a functional object.
I love the shape of the bowl.
You know, it's functional,
and yet it has beauty and elegance.
I start off with a lump of clay and work up a design motif,
and I actually carve it into the clay itself.
Here, in Baker City, we're surrounded by beautiful nature.
And so, I often work with trees or other organic
and natural design motifs.
It's gotta kind of flow out from the center
because bronze tends to flow that way.
[gentle relaxing music]
Okay.
The basic idea of lost-wax casting
is to create something in wax.
And then from that, you can cast it directly into bronze.
So I simply begin to coat my design motif with wax
to form a large wax positive.
[wax sloshing]
I've always wanted to do this with chocolate.
It would make some kind of big, crazy chocolate ball.
[ladle tapping]
Whatever is wax will be displaced entirely by bronze.
So I'm looking to create a nice, even density of wax
for a nice, smooth casting.
And then, basically after the wax cools...
[motor humming]
Then you can separate the wax from the clay.
[air hissing]
And what you had sculpted is in exact negative relief.
Then I began to carve it and accentuate the negative space.
When it's warm, I can really carve it with an X-Acto knife.
And this'll go on like this
for I'm guessing a couple of hours, but I like it.
For me, it's a meditation.
[gentle relaxing music]
As it cools and gets closer to room temperature,
it becomes very brittle.
So I use hot irons to just achieve the look
and soften the edge.
Wax is just a really beautiful forgiving medium.
You never really know until you get close to the end
exactly what's gonna open up and unfold.
And if there's gonna be a mistake,
it always seems to happen right at the end.
Great thing to do on a rainy afternoon.
And now, I'm just gonna fix a sprew-
NARRATOR: In case you didn't quite catch that,
it's called a sprew, S-P-R-E-W.
In order for the foundry to introduce bronze to that shape
you need to be able to pour the bronze
into that shape somehow.
And at the foundry, they'll add vents and so forth.
But I add a major sprew, which is kind of like a funnel.
I'll just go around it and make sure
the sprew is sealed down on there.
And there you go.
Bob's your uncle.
[light music]
At the foundry, they'll take the wax and they'll dip it
repeatedly in colloidal silica and zircon
until it develops coats of this ceramic that builds up
on the outside of the wax.
That ceramic shell then is put into a kiln
and it's brought up to high heat.
The wax vaporizes out, and it leaves behind an exact cavity
of what was once occupied by wax.
[light music]
And molten bronze is introduced into that form.
After the bronze is poured in, it's left to cool
FOUNDRY WORKER: Wanna try to get that out?
Yeah, I can get that small one.
And then the foundry men will just take a hammer
and knock all that concretion away.
[hammer tapping]
And what remains then is an exact replica of your wax,
but it's now in bronze.
And from there, I take it back into my shop
and finish it up.
[saw buzzing]
Take off all the rough edges.
[torch hissing]
And then I apply a patina to it.
I use a very simple patina, first of sulfurated potash.
And potash has the ability to stain the bronze
and it just stains it in the deep relief areas.
And then I rinse it off and I heat it up again.
[torch hissing]
And I spray on various oxides,
and that keeps the surface from oxidizing any further.
And that patina will then be its natural color
from then on.
I'm okay with that.
At the very end, I apply a very thin coating of beeswax,
just to kind of protect it and buff it a little bit.
After weeks of work,
and you can see what you got.
[gentle relaxing music]
[saw buzzing]
I've been working in bronze for about 20 years,
and it does connect me with that long line of craftsmen
thousands of years ago.
There's that thread of continuity
that we're still working in this medium
even in the 21st century.
It's lovely to participate in that.
[gentle relaxing music]
This little town has really let me just slow down.
[bronze ringing] And just go like that?
Well, you could...
And people just come in and kick the tires
and smile and laugh and we talk,
and I really love it in that regard.
And it's just my privilege to not only to be here,
but to be accepted here and to work in the mediums
that I work in.
Stay dry.
[gentle relaxing music]