William Barth Osmundsen is a sculptor. He recently completed an impressive work in bronze. "Flight of the Terns". When an artist decides to cast sculpture in bronze, he becomes the driving force of a team effort. He is like a conductor of a symphony. He guides 20 or more skilled artisians through the intricacies of his sculpture, and they in turn, interpret his ideas through their work with plaster, wax, ceramic, metal, and chemicals. The foundry is their concert hall. Artist and craftsmen work together here to bring an idea to fruition. In reviewing sculpture, one tends to fall back on texbooks abstractions such as strength, movement. balance, and form, which are important to composition, but which tell so little of the physical work involved. It was a day by day effort, however, invisible in the finished piece, that interested us. With this in mind, William Barh Osmundsen invited us to follow the work in progress on a commissioned piece he was just beginning. Our first view of "Flight of the Terns" was on paper, where Osmundsen had roughtly sketched several angles of his idea. The next step was to transform the sketch into three dimensions by creating a wax model. Using the sketch as a guidline, Osmundsen began shaping the birds, connecting them, defining the space between them, reshaping, refining, and unifying the piece. After a month, the rough form became the finished model, ready for it's trip to the foundry. It was the first of many such trips that Osmundsen would make to oversee the laborious phases required to transform this fragile prototype into immortal bronze. | THE FLIGHT OF THE TERNS 
Photo by Roger Barth Featured in this article the Terns were later purchased by SAS and presented to their Pres. World-Wide and purchased by Barber Steamship for their lobby NYC The Tallex Foundry in Peekskill NY was commissioned to exicute the project because of its unique craftsmanship and reputation as the only foundry in the Northeast which casts large as well as miniature sculpture using ceramic shell method. We arrived at the foundry on an overcast spring day and, although rain theatened, the garage-like doors were open, and work and noise spilled out into the yard. We walked through a storage lot filled with open shelves of used molds shaded by willow trees. |