ART RECIPES
Ingredients
Directions
Level: Intermediary
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A piece of marble
1 - Select a text based image from popular culture, preferably related to your personal history. Print the image, approximately the size you want to carve, on regular paper.
2- Cut out the image and set aside.
3- Find a piece of marble, alabaster, or soapstone.
4-Trace your cut out image onto the surface of the marble.
5- Cut the marble in the shape your desired shape using the angle grinder. This should be a basic form. You will be refining the shape as you carve.
6- Using the Dremel or other rotary tool start removing the the material around your traced image slowly. While doing this begin refining your overall shape.
7- Once you’ve achieved your desired shape and image grab a sheet of 100 grit sandpaper. Using it dry begin smoothing out the surface. Repeat this process until you reach 600 grit.
8- At this point you will need to keep a small amount of water around. Wet the sculpture and begin rubbing it with 800 then 1000 grit sand paper. Wet the sculpture often.
9- At this point the sculpture can either be finished or, if a high sheen is desired, you can use a mixture of tin oxide, oxalic acid, and water to polish the surface.
10- (optional) Mix the tin oxide and oxalic acid and a little bit of water. Using gloved hands apply the mixture to the surface with a piece of felt or cotton by lightly rubbing it. Leave it on the surface, after rubbing, for about 15 minutes.
11-Wash off with water.
"Las Vegas"
by Søren Hüttel.
Las Vegas, 2015, marble
Total Time:
5 hrs 55 min
Prep: 15 min | Cook: 5 hrs 30 min
About the artists
Søren Hüttel’s installations combine neon color, various light fixtures, abstract sculptural elements, found and handmade objects, and mass-produced items in arrangements that suggest cultural, domestic and commercial interior spaces simultaneously. Their presentation implies that these objects are not intended to be interpreted as individual works so much as a matrix of things, illustrating the complex relationships between the assorted objects, light emitting elements, and the architecture of the gallery.
Søren Hüttel’s interest in eclecticism–the heterogeneous quality so often ascribed to contemporary society–as an artistic philosophy. Hüttel’s practice contrasts the stuff that surrounds us by exhibiting it all together–low, high, and in-between. Hüttel haphazardly assigns equal importance to a magenta faux fur rug, rainbows, black lights, wood laminate, and Saturn’s rings, embracing the possibility for each thing to change and impact its neighbors. Distinctions previously established to identify and separate the “cultural,” “domestic,” “commercial,” or “stylish” erode and are replaced with questions about authenticity, function, attitude, and imagination.
Sören Hüttel (b. 1976, Randers, Denmark) graduated from Funen Art Academy in Odense, Denmark and the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Solo exhibits include A vision of perfection. An object of affection at New Shelter Plan in Copenhagen, DK, The eclectic is now at David Dale Gallery in Glasgow and Views on the eclectic as idea and the generous space as ideal at Kunsthallen Brandt Klædefabrik in Odense, DK. He has exhibited in group exhibitions at the 11th Luleå Art Biennial in Luleå, Sweden and at Stattbad in Berlin, in addition to various exhibits in Denmark, Latvia, China, Scotland, Sweden, and the US.
Sören Hüttel lives and works in Copenhagen, where he is an instructor at the VERA School for Art and Design.
Tools
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Dremel with tungsten carbide bits
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Optional: Straight grinder with various stone grinders and an angle grinder with a diamond disc
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Sandpaper in increments from grit 100 to 1200
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oxalic acid
