It has been a long time coming, but the finished sculpture went to the foundry this morning. We had to disassemble the wall, which meant taking one of the portraits back off the wall. The two panels fit nicely in the back of the truck and rode without a hitch to Metal Arts Foundry in Lehi. The folks there are generous to a fault and eager to help the process move forward. Their staff unloaded the panels and located us in the mold room. There they reassembled the frame and we reassembled the sculpture. Again, everything went without a hitch.
We added an additional 3" of height to the background to give the large text plenty of space above the miners' heads. The text across the top of the monument will read, "Crandall Canyon Mine, Huntington, Utah, August 2007. Those letters were ready, cut out of masonite. Using a template, we were able to place each individual letter. These need to be sealed with clay to the background of the panels.
The two paragraph body of text which tells the story of events had been formed on a clear polymer sheet. All the "kerning and leading" is completely set (thank goodness!) The task with this text is to be set into the clay so that the texture between lines of text matches that of the rest of the panel. When in bronze, the letters will appear to emerge out of the panel. We got a good start on both lettering formats today.
I also met with Kevin Maag and Brett Wright, foundry owners and monument specialists, and Dan Whittle, concrete specialist. We worked out final details, dimensions and logistics for getting the concrete pedestal underway and set the entire project off on the next steps to completion.
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