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 Jeff Teegarden | The Communicator |
| Monument to maimed mammals |
| Jeff Teegarden | The Communicator Several art students patiently wait behind Building 6 on a cool Thursday afternoon. Assembled in a semi-circle around a black garbage bag, the students keep their distance as the stench of rotting flesh wafts from the bag. They have gathered to participate in the first stages of producing plaster molds that will later be cast in bronze. When the dead coyote inside, entrails splayed out its back, and later a hawk have served their purpose, Seattle sculptor Peter Bevis will bury them in his garden along with countless other creatures he has immortalized in metal. He jokes to art students that the contents of his yard would put Jeffery Dahmer to shame. Bevis began his life as a sculptor at the age of 10. Melting lead, acquired by breaking open car batteries, in a dog food can over a small fire and pouring the molten contents into crude patterns etched in the wet sand on the banks of the Wenatchee river. He now operates his own foundry in Freemont. In addition to his road kill castings he has made a name for himself with his public sculptures in the Seattle community, as well as the restoration of the historic Puget Sound ferry boat, The Kalakala. “How do you build and bind a community?” Bevis said. “To me, a public sculpture can do that.... What would Paris be without the Eiffel Tower? His idea to cast dead animals in bronze came in 1973. He cast his deceased pet, a Caiman or miniature crocodile, in bronze as a memorial. He said he was fascinated with the results. Since then, he has produced many death masks for all sorts creatures, killed under all sorts of circumstances. Whether it be sea otters, casualties from the Exon Valdez disaster (spill kills), or a moose blindsided by an Alaskan locomotive. Bevis spoke about the process of his castings on Oct. 22. In addition to the lecture, he hosted two work shops for students to see first hand his unconventional approach to sculpture. He went through all the steps of making a mold. Prop the body, in both cases a bed of stone was laid beneath the body to simulate the texture of an asphalt road. Bevis then applied a coating of spray shellac to preserve the fine texture of fur and feather beneath it’s plaster sarcophagus. A combination of Vasoline and Pam, butter flavored, are applied to help with the removal of the body after the plaster sets. It takes at least four coats of plaster to make an adequate mold suitable for casting. In between coats a mesh of chicken wire is placed on the still drying surface to improve the structural integrity of the mold, in the coyote’s case, a bent steel frame on the second to last coat. Although the students were unable to take part in the final steps of casting the cadaver mold in bronze, they can still see his macabre work in the SFCC gallery. |