As an architect or a project designer you want to differentiate your projects; sculpture is defensibly the best way to bring positive focus to your development.
Too often you conceptualise project-defining details that ought to make the venture shine. But when it comes to understanding how the dream will transform into production reality through planning and processes, the vision rapidly morphs into nightmare.
Sculpture — and particularly large-scale art — is such a complex, multi-stage business with choices of dozens of techniques and materials. Many production methods require years of apprenticeship or even more sophisticated training and practice and master.
Bear in mind too that most production facilities, especially modern foundries, are essentially factories run by commercially and technologically minded people. They don’t always have either the artistic vision or the interpretative skills to fully grasp the spirit or the intricacy of your design. At best the results are generally frustration, dissatisfaction, time wasted through a difficult-to-manage set of processes, and a poor or even no result.
A square peg in a round hole
It’s like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Even if you could make it fit, it won’t give you the exact outcomes you ideally want. It’s also inherently risky. Unless you’re an expert project manager accustomed to dealing with manufacturing processes often in overseas locations and in languages other than English, expect a rocky road.
You will have to contend with the facility’s struggle to meet time frames, hold to budgets, and maintain expected qualities, while using appropriate manufacturing techniques to fully achieve your design intent. Some manufacturers simply don’t understand the importance of design in the process. Others are too rigid in the use of their in-house processes, which often constrain the possibility of optimum results.
I’ve consistently observed that even the most experienced designers battle to get manufacturers to fully realise their customised dreams. They never make the designer feel totally comfortable, whereas my services perfectly bridge the often-yawning chasm between design and production.
Bespoke sculpture is difficult and risky
Trying to create an original or highly bespoke sculpture by one of many production entities that may be constrained by their in-house processes and a limited experience is, at the very least, difficult and risky. As a sculptor, designer, and project manager with more than 24 years of experience, I know and understand these problems.
The benefit I offer is my intense understanding of manufacturing techniques and my database of internationally pre-qualified contractors and sub-contractors.
Over that time, I’ve pre-qualified the right partners to work with in many different process types. That means they are not only the best at what they do but have an attitude that aligns with our philosophy, which treats the most challenging projects as an opportunity to be different, and systematically work through any issues to a successful outcome.
The frustration for you as a designer is not having a skilled adviser beside you at the very beginning of your design journey. It’s as if manufacturing lives in a separate camp and can’t communicate.
I can inform you with confidence of the real breadth of options available to expand your boundaries and achieve results beyond your expectations.
I offer advice and consultations built on those decades of industry experience. The options are plentiful because I’m not constrained by owning a factory in whose processes I have a vested interest.
The best of the best
Instead I have scoured the world and pre-qualified the best of the best production facilities to collaborate with. If there is a new process we can use somewhere in the world, I’m likely to have prequalified it. It’s a totally different experience for you as a designer, as we move swiftly through the pros and cons of different approaches. My knowledge lets you make fully informed decisions without wasting time on further thought or research.
When your design requirements don’t fit exactly with a manufacturer’s facilities, tensions will arise as they try to force your dream to suit their production capabilities. You might even be told designers are ‘a right pain in the backside because they always change their minds and rarely give us the details of what they want’.
Dealing with me you’ll feel my excitement in your project, my recognition of the importance of design detail, and my understanding of additional possibilities. You’ll look forward to our collaborative journey, exploring with ease how we will make your dreams a sparkling legacy.
Before you embark on your sculpture design, give Todd Stuart a call on +61 4 5151 8865, or visit mainartery.art and benefit from his 24 years of sculptural knowledge.
