sloss: cnc mold making

Adam I arrived to Sloss just in time to be able to be able to attend a CNC mold making workshop conducted by Araan Schmidt. Araan is taking NASA images of the moon and manipulating them to create 3D forms that can be cut with Vectric V-carve software. I believe I heard him say that the surfaces are being created straight from the image (so similar to how I use "Heightfield from Image" in Rhino to create a surface from the contrast in the photo). He is then cutting these surfaces in wood on a CNC router. The wood forms were gorgeous! He then makes molds off of these to be able to create a mold that can be used to create a bonded sand mold. He had already begun work on several section of bonded sand that would come together to create a large scale (almost 500 lbs.) sculpture similar to his father's work. Araan's father is Julius Schmidt, who is the sculptor that started the cast iron art movement. The family tree of sculptors, working in Iron, starts with Julius Schmidt. Over the the next few days, Aaran assembled the large mold you see here. I talked with him later in the week and he decided to fully incase the entire mold to they would be able to hit it hard wth the full 500 lbs. of iron. Adam and I tried to stay around see this pour with the big Sloss cupola, but we had to leave before the got it poured. I have some videos of the big cupola that I'll try to post later. If you want to take a look at Arran's piece straight out of the mold take a look here.