Iron Backbone

Iron Backbone was finished and the photo shoot was in the can. Just when I thought “everything is just
as it should be,” I walked into the studio and lo and behold Raleigh Joe Hamilton, the third rail worker
was collapsing!! He literally was in the process of breaking in half in the middle. What the hell had
happened???? I couldn’t wrap my head around it, this has never happened to me before! All kinds of
mishaps happen throughout the creative process. Like the time when the male figures of Selfless Valor
slid off the table and onto the floor. Miraculously, they survived as my sister in law Marla and I stood
there in disbelief. That definitely called for a glass of red wine. Another time, when sculpting Herr
Drosselmeyer (The Gift). He too fell off the sculpture stand. When I picked him up he actually was in a
better position than before. But breaking in half, right there on the track…. Now what? The lyrics to
Fleetmac’s “Gold Dust Woman” began to rattle around in my addled brain. “And is it over now, do you
know how, to pick of the pieces and go on?” First thing to do was to remove him off the track and try
and figure out what went wrong. I had to set him down and walk away for a few days – while
simultaneously petitioning for divine intervention. I let the dust settle and began analyzing the problem.
I initially thought that maybe the studio got too hot and the clay had become too soft. I quickly
dismissed that theory as my other two guys: Erskine MacBride and Hank Crawford were unaffected by
the temperature – they were just fine. My next thought concerned the type of clay that I had used. I
hypothesized that if I were to pack harder/stiffer clay in the crack, which by now had become a cavern,
that that could be a possible solution to the problem. That too proved to not be the answer. No matter
how much I clay I packed in cavern, the steel rod which is part of the armature continued to wobble –
much like a flag on a windy day. This was definitely a bad sign. To digress here, an armature is
framework which braces and supports a sculpture. As I continued my analysis, I began to suspect that
maybe the armature had broken. As poor Raleigh just laid there, I got a knife and began exploratory
surgery. I don’t think he felt a thing! Yes, it was true, the aluminum wire within his torso and literally
snapped in half. It was at this point that I realized that I had no choice but to start over. I know it
sounds like a tragedy, but in reality it is not. Over the years I have gotten really good at starting over. My
natural predisposition is to look for the positive in a negative or adverse situation. Here is what is good
that came out of this apparent disaster. First, it gave me a great idea for topic discuss in this blog post.

Second, I was able to salvage Raleigh’s head which will be reattached to his new body. If he had fully
collapsed, his face would have been smashed to smithereens and unrecognizable and unusable. Third,
most importantly it forced me to create a stronger body for Raleigh. His collapse in the studio instead of
on the way to the foundry was a blessing in disguise. I am sure as I recall the journey of recreating his
body I will find more things to be grateful for. You find what you look for!