Binkley Commissioned for Artwork for Singapore Hotel
After almost a year of negotiations, I’m pleased to announce that a prominent hotel in Singapore has commissioned me to create 16 stone sculptures for their interior. Art consultants, Sweeney Co. are overseeing the procurement of the art and they selected me to produce the 16 sculptures. I have been tasked to create 12 identical marble sculptures for individual rooms and as the hotel interior designers have fallen in love with a sculpture in my portfolio that has already been sold, I am creating the new pieces inspired by that sculpture.
The 12 identical pieces will be very similar to “The Harp”, which now resides in a private collection in PA, USA. This project is ideal for the virtual sculpting process I’ve been teaching myself these past few years. Below is a virtual model of the sculpture that I made using the 3D sculpting program, ZBrush on my computer, and I’ve painted is to look like the type of marble the sculptures will be carved in:
I wrote a post on this process earlier, but a quick refresh is that sculptors of all disciplines have had the ability to reproduce a composition by creating a maquette, or model first and then have it copied as many times as necessary. This has included stone sculptors, and traditionally, they have engaged the use of a pointing machine, either using it themselves, or hiring trained craftspeople to do the work. Now, with the advent of robotics, I have access to the assistance of a machine to assist me. The virtual file illustrated above was sent to a CNC robot company, Doratti Sculpture Studios which roughed out the 12 sculptures in cipollino marble, from Carrara, Italy.
The patterning of the Italian cipollino marble on the real sculptures look pretty close to the virtual one. Cipollino translated to English is “onion” and is inspired by the green/black striations that weave through the yellow/white background coloured stone, and the project interior designers have fallen in love with this variety of marble. I have transported the 12 sculptures, each 30″ high, to my studio where I’m finishing them.
Once done, I’ll move on to the remaining four sculptures for the lobby area, all of which will be different from each other. I am waiting for more marble to be shipped from Europe for theses remaining pieces.
Let me know your thoughts on this method of stone sculpture vs. my traditional direct carve method in the comment section below.