As part of the exhibition of drawings by Mexican Artist Daniel Gusman – the Drawing room London held a ‘working with wax’ event ran in collaboration with the London Sculpture workshop.
At the start of the event, we were given a short talk on the Daniel Gusman and his new work for the Drawing room. We were then taken to the London Sculpture Workshop led by Giles Corby.
Despite the cold, we were kept warm by several buckets of heated wax on a set of hobs in the centre of the workbench. We were then shown several ways in which we could build with the wax. This included pouring the wax onto a marbled surface to get a very delicate layer in which you can shape using your hands. The second techniue was to drop the wax into a cold bucket of water whilst it was still in liquid form using a ladle. This caused the wax to react very dramatically to the change in temperature, enabling you to create bone like/alien/intestinal looking bits and pieces. The third method involved using wax sticks which you could melt the ends of and quickly attach it to your wax work.
The results were fascinating and everyone’s approach was very different to the next.
I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and hope to use wax making again in the future.