Linda King • December 2006

The Welder's Daughter

By Tara Roberts

When Linda King retired as an accountant, she knew that her life would never be the same.

“The other side of my brain wore out, so I am switching over late in life,” she said.

About three years ago King decided she wanted to learn how to sculpt. For more than 15 years she had made porcelain dolls, pouring the molds, painting each face and handcrafting each character’s clothing. But, it wasn’t enough.

After trying for three semesters to get into an art class at Okaloosa-Walton College and the course not registering enough students to hold the class, the instructor agreed to let King and two other students into a 3-D design class and teach them sculpting on the side.

King said they were given textbooks, and shown videos, along with what instruction the teacher could fit in.

“We were kind of thrown into it,” she said.

Despite their best efforts, the first firing on their work blew up. One student, King said, had missed the class where they were told to leave holes in their sculptures to allow air to escape while in the intense heat of the kiln.

His sculpture exploded in the oven, wiping out about three or four others, King recalled with a laugh.

Having survived her sculpting trial by fire, King completed the class and hasn’t looked back. Her sculptures have been exhibited in the Arnie Hart Juried Student Exhibition at OWC and won recognition at other local art shows. Still it wasn’t enough.

King soon entered her Bronze Age, expanding her expertise from clay sculptures to poured bronze figures. A conservative artist, King prefers the classical genre of human figures when creating her art pieces, turning away from the more modern, free form style of sculpting.

A keen observer of other people and her surroundings, King keeps a mental catalogue of facial features and expressions, along with actual photos and anatomy charts, to model her characters.

“You become a part of whatever you’re sculpting,” she said. “It is a mind set, you become one with it.”

King prefers to have a live model with sculpting, and she has even sat in front of a mirror to study her own features.

“You see things in a live person you don’t see in a picture,” she said. “I watch TV to see people’s features. I see faces in clouds. I see faces in my kitchen counter.”

Research, King said, is a vital step in getting a piece of artwork right. A recent sculpture, a two-foot tall golfer, took two months to complete, keeping King busy for weeks just getting the hand proportion and placement correct.

The steps to creating a bronze sculpture include phrases like “mother mold,” “wax chasing,” “vents and sprews,” “armature and foundry.” The tools King uses sound like she is arming herself for war – carbite tools, Dremel, sledge hammers, grinders, and pressure washers.

Once a clay model is finished, King said a mold is cast from rubber, silicon or urethane. From that a plaster mother mold is made and a wax casting is done, slushing up to four layers inside the mold.

Vents and sprews are added so that when poured, the bronze will fill all the extremities like fingertips, noses and feet. An investment mixture, usually made of silicon, plaster and sand, or potash and water is first poured into the mold and left to dry. When the hot bronze – melted at temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees – is finally poured, the wax melts away leaving the sculpture encased in outer coating of the investment.

King said it is back breaking work to hammer away the investment once it is cool enough to touch. After removing the majority of the investment, a pressure washer is used to power away the rest of the coating. Vents are removed with grinders and if the figure was cast in pieces, those must be reassembled and welded back together.

Most of the casting on her pieces, King said, is done in a foundry. She travels to a facility in Sanford, Fla., and has also had pieces cast at foundries in Houston and Atlanta.

“There are people who just do one part of the process,” she said. “One person will just do the mother molds, or the investments.”

One piece, she said, can take 15-16 weeks of work at the foundry. That is after she has completed the initial clay sculpture, which could take just as long to finish.

Bronze work, King said, is a serious endeavor. The bronze ingots alone can cost between $1,000 and $2,000 for each statue. Add to that the cost of casting the mother molds, the investment, foundry fees and welding, it becomes clear why customs pieces can cost a collector thousands of dollars.

King is currently researching a new piece for her husband’s 50th Class Reunion at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. His graduating class of 1960 was the only one to not have a Falconer. King wants to correct that and is working on a new statue of the legendary bird handler, and class mascot, for the celebration.

On a recent trip to the Academy, King said she spent hours talking with the current Falconer taking more than 90 photographs and caliper measurements to ensure the accuracy of the figure.

The daughter of a welder, King said, her father would not be surprised that she was the only one of his six children to work with metal. She said she can sometimes feel his presences while she is working and often asks him for guidance.

“I have always been so determined to do whatever I tell myself I can do,” King said. “I will find a means to do it. It’s a wonder that coming close to 62 years, and after working in finance, raising my children and being a foster parent, and all the other things I’ve done in my life, that I have finally found my life’s passion.”

King shows her works and offers custom portraits – busts or full form – by private appointment at her Valparaiso home. She can be reached at (850) 678-7117 or by e-mail at lpking@aol.com.