SCORPIONE (male) - cast bronze - potassium sulfide patina - 2¼″x 1½”x ½”
SCORPIONE (female) - cast bronze - burnt cupric nitrate patina - 2⅝″x 1⅝″x ⅝″
SCORPIO RISING - cast bronze, pietra serena sandstone, charcoal and crayon - 34"x 4½"x 1¼" - 2005
SCORPIO RISING - as installed in Zodiac exhibit - 2008
DUSTBUNNY MAMMA - cast bronze - burnt cupric nitrate patina after fifteen years - 2⅝″x 1⅝″x ⅝″
When I work in Italy I come across quite a few scorpione . . . they like to crawl around under the blocks of marble I carve. I usually just let them be, however, these two were not out in the stonepile. They were encountered on two different Autumn mornings in the house — under the bed just after I awoke and was reaching for my shoes. The male was skittering around the tile floor and took a bit of time to catch, but the female got tangled in a dustbunny and was easier to capture.
Being born under the sign of Scorpio it seemed only fitting that these confrontations with my ‘cousins’ should be remembered in Italian bronze.
Both were placed in the freezer in order to kill them. After a week the corpses were thawed and attached to a small slab of wax using a hot needle to carefully melt each leg in place. The wax slabs were placed scorpion-side down in lostwax investment molds with other wax models so the weight of the molten bronze would fill all the fine details of their forms. Even so the casting of the male is slightly marred by a couple of bubbles on his back. He was cast in the first bronze pour of the semester, while the slightly larger/heavier female casting came out exceptionally well with no flaws from the last pour of the semester.
That Autumn the male casting was incorporated into a wall sculpture titled SCORPIO RISING. It was shown in the Mostra: Autunno '05 exhibit in Palazzo Casali, and then when shipped back to the States again in an Atlanta nightclub which hosted an exhibit titled Zodiac.
The female scorpione is in my bedroom again — not under the bed this time, but hanging on the wall. I just call her 'Dustbunny Mamma’. Note how the patina has darkened with time.
