The Johnson Atelier was expanding to become, in my view, one of the premier art foundrys in the world when I joined them in 1983. J. Seward Johnson had the vision to create an atmosphere of creativity where almost all of the employees and all of the apprentices were artists who could produce their own work after hours and the foundry worked late into the night every night even on weekends. My good fortune, as an engineer without art school training, was to convince Brook Barrie, Academic Director & Jim Barton, Vice President, to hire me as an apprentice. Herk Van Tongren, the President, lead us to experimentation and soon I was casting pure copper for myself and other artists, adding to the metals we cast regularly; silicon bronze, ductile iron, 85:5:5 bronze; and aluminum. The art of casting this difficult foundry metal I learned at Precision Tube. I wrote an informative essay about the metal for the school publication, The Grapevine. In little over a year I was promoted to Staff and put in charge of the ceramic shell foundry. Teaming up with Mark Retka, who supervised gating and building ceramic shells, we produced castings that were perfect up to 98% of the time. The Chasing Department noticed and we were given free rein to experiment, developing direct burn out techniques for organic materials. We cast a 7' tall real Christmas tree for one of Julian Schnabel's pieces in the simplest manner possible without gates, vents or even pour cups. We set a record for most metal poured into ceramic shells in a day while I was in charge of the foundry which included a 550# bronze, the upper torso of an astronaut.
After two years I transferred to the Chasing/Structures Department and continued to learn and teach metalworking. I finish chased the work of J. Seward Johnson, Joel Shapiro, Ming Fey, Mel Kendrick, and many other non metalworking clients. I was assigned to assemble and chase the castings, design and build the base and carry cradle for the sculpture of Polish sculptor and Modeling Department Lead, Andrew Pitynski. "Avenger", the biggest sculpture produced by the Atelier to that date and delicate for the daring pose, was balanced on four small pads: the tip of the sword, a knee, and two toe points. The design of the base to carry this kneeling knight was called a sculpture in its own right by fellow artists. Here is a rough photo of it.
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