A Horse of a Different Colour

A filly named Peggy stands 21 hands (7 feet) high in the foyer of the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery.  She is the unmistakable creation of the artist Joe Fafard, world-famous for his sculptures.  And with any luck, Peggy will soon be a permanent resident at the Gallery.   Part of the fundraising campaign to acquire her is a tour of Fafard’s foundry in Pense, a village (pop 532) half an hour east of Moose Jaw.  So on a snowy November Saturday, we pony up a donation and tag along.

The 76-year-old artist isn’t present on the day of the tour, except as a half-size bronze sculpture waiting to be painted.  But foundry manager Phil Tremblay, who’s been with Fafard forever, is an able stand-in as he takes about 45 of us through the half-dozen rooms where the sculptures are made.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of large and small works in various stages of dismemberment and development scattered throughout the foundry – a charnel house of body parts from wolves, cattle, horses, lynx, moose, sheep, birds and humans. 

“There’s no school for this,” Tremblay says, “just trial and error.”  

First, Fafard creates a plasticene model - a lynx, a horse, a human.   From that, Tremblay and his 7-person crew  manufacture the molds into which the molten bronze is poured.  They use a variation on the lost wax method, which has been used since, well, since the Bronze Age, which began about four thousand years ago. (see lost wax link below).  

Artists are problem solvers.  If a tool they need doesn’t exist, they’ll make it.  Fafard designed the kiln in which the sculptures are fired, using natural gas at 1850 degrees Fahrenheit. 

"The temperature is harder to control than with electricity," Tremblay explains, "but it's far less expensive."

The cumulative time spent on each piece is a month or two.  But the most critical step - pouring molten bronze from one of these crucibles into a mold - scarcely takes any time at all.

“It only takes a minute,” says Tremblay, “but it’s the most important step and we all hold our breath as it’s happening.”

On the floor of the kiln room waiting to be filled and fired is a giant mold of Vincent van Gogh, both ears intact. 

 

This is what the finished product looks like installed outside the Mayberry Gallery in Toronto, just across Dundas from the AGO. 

                                                                               Photo Courtesy of Lise Tremblay

Fafard also creates laser-cut bronze sculptures, such as this mare and foal that were on Granville Island in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. 

The pair now graze happily in front of Fafard's home on the prairie near Pense.

The foundry tour takes a couple of hours, and our heads are spinning with images and information when we emerge into the late fall afternoon.  Snow is blowing horizontally across the prairie from the northwest, and had started to drift up against the passenger side of our car.  But someone has thoughtfully shoveled a pathway through the snow to the car, and then gone on to carve a peace sign, a heart and a giant sun on the empty snowy street.  Turns out to be a grizzled chap of indeterminate age called Danny, who lives across the street with his big black dog Hurley.

“Peace, love and sunshine,” he wishes us from his front door as we head home to Moose Jaw.

Links:

Joe Fafard:   https://www.slategallery.ca/joe-fafard/
Lost Wax:    https://www.britannica.com/technology/lost-wax-process