Chapter Nine : Sculpture with Biological Fiber & Cement
The sculptor who works with fibers and cement may start on this path thinking about the design of stage and movie sets, furniture and other household goods, or from the perspective of pure fine art sculpture. The following examples are from none of these categories, they are textbook examples upon which to place material for photographs, similar to the example tank armature built and photographed for the ferrocement tank construction manual in this manual series. Examples similar to the wire armature above are covered with fiber, cement and acrylic starting on the next page.
Fiber may be placed on a wire armature, shaped foam, balloons, wood, cardboard, or a bamboo frame, the list is unlimited. Two inch bamboo scraps (5 cm) make an ideal spool to hold cement soaked strips of muslin that will attach and provide dimensional foundation in ways that are also unlimited.
This technique may well be applicable in a future culture that sees it is ecologically beneficial to eliminate pain and suffering from poverty and homelessness by building beautiful low cost shelter using these same sculptural techniques.
Smaller rolls of muslin than those devised to connect bamboo or straight sapling wood are exceptionally good for the sculptural task of developing body dimension using traditional wire armature techniques which date to classical studio plaster sculpture contemporary with Michaelangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo da Vinci.
Utility grade muslin is ripped into strips, wet and drip dried to slightly damp. Apply cement and acrylic mix to one side and then the other, using almost anything as a center axle, in this case some plastic tube, make the strips into easily applied rolls.
Start at the extremities and work inward, leaving the point of contact of the foot with the base until last to avoid vibration and flex of this key structural point. The three rolls wrapped everything but the right leg. Two additional rolls finished the leg and the attachment to the wire base, removed, perhaps prematurely, and replaced with stapled cotton strings stretched over the foot and a remaining cross of welded wire, which is minimally covered by the base material.
The wrapped lower leg is covered with hemp fiber strands impregnated with acrylic and cement, which is also the primary material in the base foundation. A loose bunch of hemp strands about the length of the leg starts at the heel and forms the beginning of a calf muscle, during application it became slippery and wrapped around the knee, spreading fairly evenly over the upper leg. Two pallet knives were used to pick up the fiber bundle and work it onto the leg. At this point there is no way to know if the single foot and leg will be strong enough to support the finished sculpture.
