Casey Horn's Newest Bronze Sculpture June 15 2016, 0 Comments

Our bronze sculptor, Casey Horn, known for his incredible three-dimensional renditions of Chinese written characters, has created a new series of sculptures. The new series is called "The Heart." Currently, Casey has two pieces completed, "Heart" and "Mindfulness," and is in the process of creating others for the series. The pieces will be grass script - a simplified fluid way of writing the characters - and some will be kinetic. Typically "Heart" will form the base for each sculpture in the series, with another symbol on top to create an exquisite symbol and sculpture. Because edition sizes will be small (typically nine castings per piece), we will be taking pre-cast orders.

In many modern cultures, there is a heart-mind dichotomy which expresses the heart as the center for emotions and the brain as the origin of thought. However, traditional Chinese culture views the heart as the organ of both emotion and thought -- it is the center of a person's intellectual, mental, and emotional being. The written character for heart can be interpreted as heart, mind, or spirit, and is a key foundation that words involving emotion and thinking are built upon. When present, the character for heart encompasses feelings and ideas, as both are processes that evolve within the heart. In translation, the piece Mindfulness (pictured to the right) means "the practice of recognizing where your heart is now." As you will see in the first picture below, "Mindfulness" is created with the symbol for "Now" above "Heart-Mind."

Click here to view "Mindfulness" in our online gallery. A video of the piece in motion is at the end of this blog post. It is the very first piece cast in the series to be available for acquisition from our gallery. Currently #1 of 9 of the edition is in Vail, while #2 is in Breckenridge.

Here is a description of the sculpting process for "Heart":

	The sculpting process starts with the study of the character. This includes its meaning, composition, stroke order, and writing style
	Once a three-dimensional sketch has been created, preliminary shapes are cut out of sheet bronze using a plasma cutting torch.
	During the annealing process, the material is heated just short of its melting point and allowed to cool at room temperature in order to make it malleable.
	The material is now easier to hammer and form into the shapes needed to create the sculpture.
	The shapes are welded together, forming the basic sculptural design.
	Additional sides are fitted and welded to create the appearance of a solid form. Many grinding techniques are used to refine and texture the sculpture in prepartion for the patina (coloring).