We're back!

We're back!  And such a lovely little trip we had...  Our route (both ways) took us around Bear Lake, then to Evanston, Rock Springs, and finally Lander, Wyoming.  We saw far more wildlife than we expected to!  On the stretch from Bear Lake to Evanston we saw many Sandhill cranes, and a few pronghorn antelope (the latter exciting for us, as we don't see them often).  But on the stretch from Rock Springs until about 30 miles before Lander, we saw hundreds and hundreds of pronghorns.  We found out later that they migrate to this area every spring so the pregnant females can feast on emerging forbs – rich in the minerals they need at that point in their pregnancy. They sure were a feast for our eyes!  They were still there on our way home yesterday, too.

Friday we spent all day in the Lander area.  The big event was visiting Eagle Bronze – the foundry selected by the sculptress (Christine Knapp) who created our mountain lion statue.  She'd told us to expect to be there all day, though we had absolutely no idea why.  We had the very mistaken idea that sculptures were made by pouring bronze into a mold, letting them cool, then taking them home.  That turns out to be very wrong. :)

The first thing we saw when we walked in was the statue at right.  The color in the photo is accurate – that's actually what it looked like!  I thought it was clay at first, and that we'd had some enormous misunderstanding with Christine!  But then I remembered we're at a foundry, so there must be bronze involved somewhere...

We spent the next four hours enthralled by the two “patina people” – artists in their own right – transform what you see at right into the statue we took home.  They were fine with us watching and asking a million questions, something we both enjoyed very much.  The collection of photos below are those I took as they were working.  The overwhelming takeaway for me from watching them was that this process is complicated.  The photos below are in sequence, and you can see each part of the process – washing, buffing, applying chemicals, using heat, drying, polishing, lacquering, and (the last step!) waxing.  I had utterly no idea that there was so much use of color and texture in making a bronze statue!  Just a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean.  To make the eyes stand out, the orbs were carefully buffed, then polished with jeweler's rouge.  For certain areas of their pelt (tip of the tail, back of ears, etc.) the fur is darker, almost black.  In those areas, the patina people heated the metal (to open pores in the metal), gently sprayed black acrylic (some of which seeped into the heat-opened pores), then let the metal cool before buffing the acrylic off.  The result is a subtly darkened area of the metal, with a nice gradient to the areas that weren't darkened.  Watching these two work, and learning from their knowledgeable responses to our questions, was an experience I'll cherish...

We took one small break from watching them at the urging of Christine, who wanted to show us an amazing statue of a horse that would soon be leaving the foundry (after having been ten years in the making!).  That thing is 28' tall from the floor to the tip of its nose ... just look at Debbie – she doesn't quite come up to its knee!  The statue is made of bronze, with the “skin” being about 3/8" thick (roughly the same as our statue).  That's not nearly strong enough to support the weight of the statue, so the horse has a gigantic steel armature inside of it – and interesting piece of engineering all by itself, complicated in form, and with some challenges in making it strong enough to handle all possible wind loads.  Eventually this statue will end up in Singapore (where the customer is), so they won't have to worry about snow loads. :)  This same foundry makes miniatures the size of your little finger, and I'm told this horse is only the third-largest (by weight) statue they've ever made.

While in Lander, we stayed at Lander Lodging, and a very enjoyable stay that was!  Our hosts, Don and Laural, couldn't possibly have been any nicer.  In fact, they rescued us from an awkward car-charging situation by giving us a couple of rides into town, something we greatly appreciated.  Most of all, though, they were “our kind” of people: farmers, animal lovers, full of stories (especially Don!), and dispensing good cheer in all directions.  Their little spot in the Sinks Canyon is truly beautiful, with great views, lots of trees, and plenty of animals for us to meet.  We particularly enjoyed their miniature horses Star and Indy (below).  We learned from Don that the miniature horses were developed specifically to work in mines, pulling carts of ore.  I'd always thought they were more modern than that, and developed mainly as pets – not so.  These two had very sweet and curious dispositions, and both were jealous if we paid attention to the other :)...

It was a lovely trip, and now our mountain lion statue is parked on our trailer in our back yard.  On Tuesday my brother Scott will be here, and with his help we're going to move it into a temporary position until we get its permanent home on a water feature built.  Once I get it unpacked and placed, I'll take some photos of it and post them...