Bronze: Where Ancient Craft Meets Contemporary Vision

Bronze doesn't care about trends. For 5,300 years, this alloy has served artists who understand that some materials transcend their moment, who recognize that the right medium elevates concept into legacy. At Sorrel Sky Gallery, we represent sculptors who've mastered bronze not because it's traditional, but because nothing else can do what it does.

The technical explanation sounds simple: copper and tin, when heated and combined, create an alloy harder than either of its parent metals. But that simplicity masks profound capability. Molten bronze creeps into crevices measured in fractions of a millimeter, capturing detail that would be lost in stone or wood. It resists corrosion that destroys lesser materials. It accepts patinas that range from living greens to burnished golds, surfaces that shift with light and viewing angle.

What makes bronze contemporary isn't innovation in the alloy itself. It's how artists like Kim Seyesnem Obrzut, Michel Bassompierre, Star Liana York, and Jeremy Bradshaw wield a 5,000-year-old material to capture ideas that couldn't exist without it.

The lost wax technique has remained largely unchanged since ancient civilizations first developed it, which should tell you something about its enduring elegance. The process requires artists to repeatedly destroy their work to arrive at the final sculpture. There's something philosophically appropriate about that: creation through controlled demolition, permanence achieved by accepting impermanence at every stage.

Contemporary bronze sculptors begin with oil-based clay, building forms that remain pliable through months of refinement. Whether Star Liana York is capturing the fluid movement of horses and their riders or Fred Ortiz is preserving the dignity of working ranch life, the clay sculpture becomes a full-scale model, every surface worked until it captures exactly what the artist envisions. This isn't a sketch. It's the sculpture in temporary form.

Artists coat the clay model with liquid urethane rubber, building layers that capture every tool mark, every fingerprint, every intentional texture. Once the rubber sets, they encase it in plaster, creating what foundries refer to as the master mold. This plaster shell becomes the sculpture's permanent record, allowing editions to be cast years or decades after the original clay dried and crumbled.

For monumental works like Bassompierre's bears, York's equestrian compositions, or Obrzut's Hopi maidens, sculptors often create a series of maquettes, smaller studies that work out composition and balance before committing to the final scale. Large sculptures require internal armatures, such as wooden or foam cores, that support tons of clay while keeping the finished bronze light enough to ship and install. The master mold for these pieces gets cut into sections, a three-dimensional puzzle that will reunite only after the bronze has been cast and welded.

Here's where the process earns its name. Artists pour hot wax into the master mold, creating a hollow wax replica of the original sculpture. They attach wax sprues, carefully positioned channels that guide molten bronze from the reservoir to the sculpture, filling from bottom to top to eliminate air pockets that would create voids in the final casting.

The wax sculpture is repeatedly dipped in liquid ceramic slurry, with each layer drying before the next application. After multiple coatings have built a shell thick enough to contain molten bronze, the entire assembly is placed into a kiln heated to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The wax melts and drains away, leaving a hollow ceramic shell that perfectly captures the sculpture's interior surface.

The lost wax technique gets its name from this moment: the wax is sacrificed, burned away, irretrievably lost. Every casting requires a new wax model. Every bronze sculpture, whether it's Jim Eppler's wildlife studies, Bryce Pettit's cowboys and cowgirls, or Michael Tatom's abstract forms, represents a unique moment when molten metal filled a ceramic void that existed only once.

Liquid bronze pours at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees, glowing orange-white as it flows through the ceramic shell's sprues. The metal seeks every available space, filling the void left by the burned wax, cooling from the outside in, and solidifying into the form the artist had imagined months or years earlier.

After cooling, foundry workers chip and sandblast away the ceramic shell. The sprues get cut off. What emerges is recognizable as the sculpture but far from finished. Voids need filling through careful welding. Tool marks need smoothing. Surface textures need refining through files, grinders, and patient handwork.

For monumental sculptures cast in sections, this phase involves welding pieces together and grinding the seams until they vanish, until the sculpture reads as a single unified form. Whether it's Lisa Gordon's bears catching salmon or Jeremy Bradshaw's detailed wildlife compositions, the metal-finishing stage determines whether a casting becomes merely accurate or genuinely refined.

The final step transforms raw bronze into the sculpture collectors recognize. Patina isn't paint applied to bronze's surface. It's a controlled chemical reaction, corrosion deliberately induced and arrested at precisely the right moment.

Artists heat the finished bronze and apply acids, such as liver of sulfur or ferric nitrate, or other chemicals that react with the metal's surface. Greens emerge from copper oxidation. Browns and blacks from sulfur compounds. Each application, each heating and cooling cycle, builds layers of color that penetrate the bronze rather than sit on its surface.

The patina choices sculptors make become integral to their artistic voice. Ortiz might choose rich, traditional browns that honor Western bronze heritage. Obrzut's patinas often incorporate warm, earthy tones that reference Hopi pottery traditions. Bassompierre's surfaces capture the subtle color variations found in living animals. Pettit and Eppler use patina to create atmospheric depth, suggesting dust and sunlight on working cowboys and wild creatures.

The process requires intuition developed over years: when to apply heat, when to let sections cool, how to encourage chemical reactions in some areas while protecting others.

After achieving the desired patina, sculptors seal the surface with wax, protecting the color while imparting a subtle luster that deepens with age. The wax isn't permanent. It wears away gradually, requiring renewal every few years. However, that impermanence keeps bronze alive, allowing it to respond to human touch and environmental conditions, and to change in ways that connect it to its owners.

Bronze sculptures at Sorrel Sky Gallery, from York's powerful equestrian work to Bradshaw's meticulous wildlife studies, from Tatom's contemporary abstractions to Gordon's fishing bears, from Obrzut's cultural narratives to Bassompierre's endangered species, share something beyond material. They represent commitments to craft that can't be rushed, visions that require months from clay to finished patina, and ideas substantial enough to justify bronze's demands.

The process hasn't changed in millennia because it works. Because bronze captures what artists see in ways that other materials can't match. Because collectors recognize the difference between objects made quickly and sculptures built to outlast their creators.

Bronze doesn't care about trends. It simply endures, carrying forward the visions of artists who understand that some ideas deserve materials equal to their ambition.