Randall's Urban Architectural Sculptures

The inevitable time has come to the point where I needed to start an overhaul project of my entire 13 x 22 basement casting and finishing studio. I began with sheetrocking the walls and building entirely new work benches. The first workbench is 16 feet long with much needed shelving below for storage, the mixing station and old dust collection system has been removed and while I’m awaiting delivery on a new dust collector I have been working on building a new mixing station and a staining/ finishing work bench.

I’m not trying to make a finished room, it IS after just the basement and shop, but brightening up the walls with new sheetrock, insulation, storage and work benches, a commercial dust collector and so forth will help me become more efficient in my work.

Additional lighting is also being installed which has always been a problem due to the low ceiling, but more light is really needed.

What is really needed is to erect a stand-alone studio out back and this is something I have planned for a future date to pursue, that’s another reason I won’t do a total finishing job in the basement shop as this will not be permanently designated for this purpose.
A stand alone studio might have a 24 foot by 34 foot or so footprint, and a good high cathedral ceiling with skylights, but since I hate everything about those ugly commercial metal buildings and shed I would want to stick build it myself, if not in the style of the house then something more creative or hinting at gothic, Swiss challet with wide overhangs or Art Deco.

So for now the basement space will have to do, so it may as well become nicer to work in and more efficient.

Some progress photos;

I bought this interesting old plaster architectural mask, I believe it was once a corbel, it originated from Cairo Egypt and dates to around 1900, maybe a little older- during the British ruling era when the Brits and westerners brought their art and architecture with them as they flooded into the rapidly growing city.

I will be making a mold of this soon.

This is a 40″ tall terra cotta lion from Alexander Pantages (1876-1936) theater. This was the second Pantages Theater in Seattle, built 1911 and opened in 1915. The theater stood at the corner of 3rd Avenue and University Street. It was sold along with his other holdings in 1929. The theater was demolished in 1965 or 1967 depending on which source is consulted. His long association with architect B. Marcus Priteca (1889-1971) began in 1911 and continued through the 1920s. Priteca designed and oversaw the construction of 22 theaters for Pantages, some located as far as Edmonton, Kansas City, and Memphis.

The lion had been removed with a number of others during demolition, in the 80′s he wound up at the home of a Washington state couple who enjoyed him in their yard for the last 20 years. I acquired the lion from them recently along with the lovely 1949 photo of the theater above featuring billing for Alan Ladd and showing enough details the lions can be seen above.

The terra cotta lion was made by Gladding McBean terra Cotta Co.

Anticipating- anxiously like a kid at Christmas it’s arrival possibly today, or Friday, hard to imagine it takes SIX DAYS to ship and how slow they go by when you are waiting on something!

With the hiring of two moving men to retrieve the lion from the seller, and crate, then ship it by freight truck, the lion cost pretty close to $2,000, with $1200 being the purchase price.
I don’t have any plans to reproduce this but we’ll see when it arrives, it’s just so large I think it would be impractical and casts in concrete for the garden would be a real chore to ship.

Update, more photos and infohere; http://www.urbansculptures.com/sculpturephotos/Plate-169-s.html

Photo of the original, 26″ square, 1888 “Elizabeth” from East Harlem NYC.

Finding a slightly vague reference to this building in my old daily record books, I mentioned that a panel from 120th st and Park Ave with the date 1888 on it was obtained. This would be the South West corner where there is now a parking lot and what appears to be a low rise office building according to Google’s live air view maps. Hard to remember now 30 years later a few exact details, but I remember the exact corner (South West) and that it was either 119th, 120th or 121st street near 1st ave. I never got the exact address, it was one of those far away buildings- five miles from home and I was with a friend in his car so I didn’t always take notes or have the chance to stop and take photos or details- especially of locations that far away when I couldn’t really go back later on via bicycle to take photos etc- we often went around 5 AM or basically when it was dark to salvage.

This area was not a good neighborhood and was almost 100% African-American, so two white guys wandering around looking up at abandoned buildings stood out big time!

Park ave is a couple of blocks or so West of 1st, so I am 99% certain the building stood on this corner of 120th and Park;

I will make the model smaller- 22″ square to reduce the weight a bit.

I started the model today by scaling the printed out photo to real-size 23″ square to use as a visual guide.
Next step was creating a couple of templates, one of which is to create the raised circular moulding around the profile, and another thing to make is a device to run that template around on the clay build-up to get it perfectly round by affixing it to a center point screwed down.

I still have 350# of clay left from the 1,000#
This is one of the better designs I had salvaged, I had two of them but they were sold years ago.