Birds in Nest Jade II, my new cast, is not a replica, even though I made this using the new mold of my oil-based clay model Birds in Nest. Read on to find out why! Love, protection, nurture & safety are all present in this small sculpture. A mother bird protects and nurtures two chicks who snuggle to her breast for warmth and safety.
The new, second mold I used for this corrects a major flaw in the first mold. The new mold also includes some improvements I made to the original clay model. So I have a better mold of an improved original work.
About this Cast
But what makes this cast unique? Well, a few things! First I should explain: I just don’t really “do” editions. They bore me! I am a creative artist, unwilling to become a technician unless I really need to. I prefer to experiment and to play. So this first cast in the new mold has a few experimental and custom features!
Birds in Nest Jade II is a mixed media cast: I cast the birds in a custom tinted resin, with “inclusions” of natural quartz and fragments of hardened colored resin. These are not prominent, but are visible. The inclusions show slightly in upper part of the piece, in the baby bird’s head, in the mother birds wing, etc. I believe this makes the piece more interesting, with a bit of the variety of natural stone. I used acrylic modified cement for the birds’ nest. The two materials were poured into the same mold, a few days apart. I have joined the two parts securely by embedding threaded hardware across both sections.
Once I removed my birds from the mold, I cleaned and smoothed a few imperfections, and added a special touch: this mother bird holds food for her young. It is perhaps a worm, or a tiny fish… I certainly don’t know!
