Dear Art of Resilience: Together We Are Better Committee,

( I have modified this proposal in order to offer to you cast hydrocal/plasters of my three artworks. Hydrocal is a special plaster that is super hard and made specifically for casting into rubber molds and making permanent artworks. Hydrocal is naturally white with a matte finish, and is quite aesthetic as a finished artwork. Hydrocal captures all of the precise detail that is in the rubber mold, down to fingerprint detail, and can last hundreds of years. Hydrocal/plaster prints can be painted in a variety of techniques. For the WOOD NYMPH wall relief in section 1 of the photographs, I have offered prices for hydrocal/plaster print and also for a bronze print ).

My name is Robert Bricker, I am a figurative sculptor, and I live in Charlottesville. Since 1983, I have owned and operated a small artisan business called Bronze Craft Foundry For Sculpture. I maintain a drawing studio in McGuffey Art Center, and my foundry facility in Waynesboro. Although it is a small business, I have built my foundry to handle monumental scale bronze sculptures, and I am responsible for the creation for fifteen public monuments in Virginia and on the east coast, many of which are of my own design. Additionally, I was the first assistant and foundry foreman for the creation of Paul DiPasquale’s colossus NEPTUNE located in Virginia Beach (which we sculpted and cast into bronze in China) Further, I have created countless normal sized sculptures of my own design and for my artist customers. For example, I cast eight editions of bronzes for the late Cy Twombly sold thru Gagosian Gallery, NYC. As an artisan/craftsman,  I restoration-welded fifteen feet of stress fracture cracks in Arlington’s World War Two Marine memorial (Iwo Jima) in 2017. I am the only sculptor permitted to perform such bronze surgery on it since its dedication in 1956. All of these assignments and more are documented in my website https://www.robertebricker.com

The Covid pandemic is having a perilous effect on my small business and my career. I am fortunate that various contracts were signed and are proceeding since late winter, but there is a dramatic drop-off in new contacts, and orders from veteran clients. Purchase award of any or all of my three submitted artworks will literally employ me and my chosen artisan independent contractors for full-time work for the next month of pandemic recession in order to move these sculpted compositions thru the elaborate molding and casting process at my foundry. 

Although I own a lost-wax bronze foundry, and I am a virtuoso mold maker/bronze caster, I literally cannot afford to produce my own larger works.  A purchase award from you will directly result in a month of full-time foundry employment for myself and my chosen artisan assistants in directly creating my fine art designs into hydrocal/plaster, with the option of bronze for the WOOD NYMPH wall relief.  Your purchase of one, two or all three of my artworks during this Covid pandemic and economic will result in the following. 

(a) all master rubber molds  permanently made that are will be crucial in the creation of the full cast hydrocal/plaster and bronze editions.

(b) first cast hydrocal/plasters in the signed and numbered limited edition of my finest compositions, ready for auction in November exhibit.

(c) first cast bronze of the WOOD NYMPH wall relief.

(d) one month of direct full-time employment of myself and of skilled labor by my trained artisan assistants, starting immediately.

(e) crucial photo and video documentation of the elaborate casting process and arcane hand skills, that will be used directly in advertising and marketing of my innovative artworks to the worldwide market.

I have modified this proposal in order to offer to you cast hydrocal/plasters of my three artworks. Hydrocal is a special plaster that is super hard and made specifically for casting into rubber molds and making permanent artworks. Hydrocal is naturally white with a matte finish, and is quite aesthetic as a finished artwork. Hydrocal captures all of the precise detail that is in the rubber mold, down to fingerprint detail. Additionally, hydrocal/plaster prints can be painted in a variety of techniques. In section 4 of this proposal, I have included photos of the bronze craft molding and casting process of the large vase in order to communicate to you the elaborate complexity of the molding and bronze casting process – resulting in indestructible and archival bronze.

I am a relief sculptor, with an emphasis on figurative expression, composition and poetic ambiguity. My art has a distinguished sensibility of form and space. The two vases that I am submitting  to your committee are self-portraits in the extreme, with in-depth introspection and veiled layers of self-confessions.  The WOOD NYMPH wall relief based on my decades of figure drawing and teaching figure drawing in my McGuffey studio. All three artworks are designed as visual poetry, in which the meaning for the viewer will be as legitimate as my own original intention. By investigating my ‘self’, I hope to strike chords that rhyme with the inner selves of my audience. The two vases are reliefs in-the-round; there is no Y axis that terminates their composition, and it is impossible to see the entire image all at once. Thus, the storylines unfold in time similar to literature and theatre. I discovered what I call ‘cylindrical composition’ with themes rising and diminishing as the vase is circumambulated, or rotated before the eye. 

I thank you for your time and interest.

Robert Bricker, Sculptor.

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* Please click each ‘works’ button below in order to see photographs of the full artworks and their details.

1. WOOD NYMPH, wall relief , 10″h x 10″w, ………. cast hydrocal/plaster – $1,600, cast bronze – $4,000

2. PANTHEON URN, (large vase) cast hydrocal-plaster, 21″h, ………. $4,000

3. CATASTROPHE VASE, ( small vase) cast hydrocal-plaster, 14″h, ………. $5,000

* Molding and bronze casting process – Please click the ‘Process’ button to see photographs of the lost-wax casting process.