25 Churches Chiseled in Four days!!!

I've just completed a four day brick sculpting frenzy. Right in the middle of my busy season with the HGTV show shooting breathing down my neck, I had to complete four versions of the "Mythological Kitty" mentioned in my previous post. On top of the eight orders in for the holiday, I was commissioned to render twenty brick statues of St Paul's Church in Shelton, CT. So that they can raise funds for the church. That quickly jumped to twenty five ...I was able to cram the extra ones in to meet the Sunday, December 17th deadline. The bricks were sold at a morning after mass brunch and sold out within a couple of minutes. The sale was so successful that they ordered about ten more to be delivered before Christmas. I don't know if I will be able to handle the load before the holiday but we will see. I would like to get the previous orders in people's hands before Christmas comes around without burning myself out. I will be venturing into the New Year with a surplus of about ten "Urban Fossils" orders to be filled. That does not include a potential 20-30 more orders from St Paul's Church. In The New Year I will be offering a fundraising concept for churches and organizations that would enable to make multiple bricks available at a discount rate so that they can resell them for a profit. For now, I would just like to finish what I have on the table and ease my way into the New Year. I am anticipating a rush of orders in the upcoming months prior to the air date of the That's Clever Program. Another seven were ordered but due to a back log of Christmas orders, they were rendered and delivered the following weekend.

HGTV Comes To Derby!

Finally, the day arrived... I've been waiting for several weeks for the people from the hit HGTV Show "That's Clever" to come and shoot an episode in my home studio in Derby, CT. I was going to create my "Mythological Kitty" which is a large ghostly winged cat with gleaming eyes that look Right through you! It was my most intricate piece to date. I had to change the way I usually construct my bricks in the interest of good television. Posing in unusual positions so that they can get a clear camera angle and hamming it up while working with heavy hammers and razor sharp chisels is not my idea of fun. I almost ripped my hand in half on camera while carving the subject's wooden wings with a angled wood chisel in one scene. It was quite an interesting experience. They made me take everything that was not created by me off the walls of my studio and covered anything that resembled a brand name with stickers and black tape. The small studio was filled with two camera men a sound man and a segment producer who viewed everything on a monitor. Everything went surprisingly smooth. We shot several hours of footage for a ten minute spot on the show. The only scene that we had to re shoot was the opening scene when my cat, Shadow decided to use the tripod as a backscratcher and bumped it during the filming. I was quite nervous working on a piece with two camera men breathing over your shoulder and a voice from beyond giving me directions and lines that would make the show more interesting. "Tell us why you like to use acrylic paint?" Tell us why you chisel bricks?" I never thought about it before ...There is no real answer...I basically do what I do" which is not what they wanted to hear...That's when they would feed me their set up lines.
Hey it was O.K by me ...that's their job to produce the most interesting segment that they could. The whole shoot took a little more than six hours and upon completion I was relieved that it was over, sorry that it was over as well as excited and mentally exhausted all at the same time. Now looking back at this it was quite an honor to be among the select few to be honored to appear on a national television program.

The Urban Fossil Story

It all began back in 1989, in a gallery down in New York City's SOHO Art District.
I was helping a gallery owner/ friend set up a large sculpture display in the front display window. There was a sill that obstructed viewing the ornate base of the statue and it needed to be propped up. Since no pedestal was large enough to raise the staue, I noticed that they were renovating a building across the street and piled the old bricks by the curbside. I asked if I can borrow some bricks and proceeded to construct the make-shift pedestal for the statue. The two foot tall brick pedestal was finished in a matter of minutes and I went to retrieve the large statue for display. A large tour bus loaded with Japanese tourists disembarked in front of the gallery and filed inside. They proceeded to pickup the bricks and walk towards the register. I said "Hey, please leave those bricks alone, they have plenty of them across the street!" The spokesman for the group explained to me that they wanted to purchase the bricks. Not wanting to pass up a sale the gallery owner obliged. The tourists didn't even blink when he told them they can have them for $10 a brick. I asked the man why he wanted to buy the old bricks? He told me " We wanted to take a piece of New York home with them." I was fascinated by his reply and offered to clean the mortar off the old bricks. I grabbed a hammer and a screwdriver and proceeded to chip away at the dried mortar. With the slip of the hand, I discovered that the bricks were easy to carve. I sculpted the very first brick, a genuine, New York City cockroach! We decided that albeit kinda cute that a cockroach was too icky to sell. We moved on to produce New York City icons such as the Empire State, Chrysler Building as well as other famous and not so famous landmarks and we dubbed them *"Urban Fossils". They soon achieved much acclaim appearing in several magazines and newspapers. Special edition "Urban Fossils" where presented to ators and actresses upon leaving thier theatrical runs on the Broadway Stage so that they too could take a piece of New York so that they too could take a piece of New York home with them. In the late 1990's they were a victim of success and went into retirement. Upon moving to Connecticut, I was inspired by the abundance of picturesque lighthouses and restarted the brickwerks in my basement studio. I can now sculpt just about anything in a brick from people, pets houses cars boats, ships planes and trains...you name it,
I can sculpt it. A recent sale of a high end gallery "Urban Fossil" had led the HGTV program "That's Clever To contact me to appear on their program. The show was filmed on December 16th and will aire sometime in June 2007.