ro: Let’s start right off with your Cigar Figures please, which are so substantial and so delicate simultaneously. They are beautiful, charming and evocative. So, who are they? Where do they come from? And what inspired the series? HW: My Cigar Figures are cast of real cigars butts and found sticks. I remember a Native American story from my childhood that my mother told of the “Stick People”. These Stick People were dark figures that would run through the night and call your name; the Cigar Figures are my re-interpretation of that story. No one knows what these stick figures look like because the story goes that you would die if you were to follow and look at them. The story was a way of warning people of the evils of life and to be careful. I always had a hard time with the story because I wanted to know what they looked like; so many years later they became real sticks with cigar bodies. The cigar part came in grad school. There was a man who smoked cigars and I noticed that as he got to the end of the cigar that it looked like a girls body wearing a dress, very whimsical; so I started to collect them and I found sticks for the legs and added the most simple of heads to the top. This is where I made the rest of the story in my own mind of the stick people and added the twist that they are the whimsical of life.
my minds eye or the sketch, just that it gets me to the table. Many times as I am working one figure the simple gesture of the figure’s shoulder or turn of the head will spark another completely different piece. There are other outside elements at play that also will lead to an image. The way a stick looks like a bird in flight or the inside of a geode rock and the amazement my son had when he saw that for the first time. These all begin to intersect and the work grows from the many elements seen, found, remembered or felt. There are sometimes that it is a dream that I am drawing, and then there are those nights that it is the magic of the night and the quiet mind that it just happens.
ro: I love that... I saw on your website that you work in lost wax. I have no idea what the lost wax method is and I know I could Google it, but where’s the fun in that? Will you humor me with an explanation? HW: With my bronze work I am casting in my studio with the method of “lost wax.” In lost wax you create an object in wax then add sprues, which will be the channels for the metal to flow through the mold to the object. The sculpture will then be invested which is a compound that is either poured over it, or dipped, then that is placed in a ceramic kiln to burn out the wax. This is where the technique gets the name because the wax is lost leaving a void for the metal to fill. The total ro: Would you mind talking about the mask that burn out time can vary depending on the size appears on the characters in multiple works of your but average is about 18 hours with temperatures art? reaching 1350° F. You pull the mold out of the HW: The masks are creatures from nature and the kiln and place in a sand pit. In the last 30 minutes child’s imagined world. As a child we would make of the burnout the metal is melting in a propane masks and be anything we wanted to be and we fired furnace. You lift the crucible out of the furnace could do anything in them. I always wanted to fly and pour the liquid metal into the empty cavity and to this day I still dream that I can jump until of the mold. That sits until it is cool and then you I take flight. These masks are a way to represent Holly Wilson, Oklahoma City, Cigar Girl Walking, Bronze, can remove the shell and if all went well you have the different personas that we need or desire to be Encaustic, Wood, 12.5”x5”x4” a bronze figure that was once wax. Cut the sprues, in life. do some sand blasting to clean the surface, add the ro: So I’m wondering then, does each stick person have her/his own patina to get a color, and voila! You’re done! I have utilized this process story or are we seeing one specific character in different masks? over the past ten years and it, combined with the small scale, allows me HW: Each of the figures is individual and independent of the others. to work in sculpture with freedom and complete control of the process There is a theme of a boy and a girl and in a group there may be a and final surface treatment. narrative with one another. Even though each figure does have their ro: From lost wax to encaustic work, are your encaustic pieces own story, a universal story if you will, one that I hope we all can portraits of the stick figures? How do you decide whether to connect with in one facet or another. work 2D or 3D? ro: When you are creating artwork, do you sketch? Is there a plan? Or HW: I use the encaustic as a method to drawing with relief. Some of do you just start sculpting and let each figure spontaneously evolve? the images are from the figures with masks but most are my sketches. HW: It can start with seeing something in my life that strikes a For me, it is hard to get “around” a thing on paper; there is no volume chord, like the way my daughter and son each sit differently to look at for me to move. The encaustic lets me draw my weighted lines and something on the ground. I then begin working that over in my head create depth. I do also love the immediate quality of the process. as I chase my two kids around the house or try to make myself go to Working with bronze there are so many steps, working with encaustic sleep at night. When I do get to sit down in the quiet of the studio I the results are very immediate and it’s rewarding. I move back and make some simple sketches. I don’t worry that it is just as I saw it in continued on page 6
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