Fired Up Over Art : Oxnard Foundry Finds Successful Niche Working With Sculptors

Walking among the rows of brass creatures at his foundry, Stan Reich isn’t one to pass artistic judgment.

Unlike some art foundries, Image Casting Inc. is a place where artists’ wills can run free. In the foundry business, tempers can flare if artist-owners try to exert too much influence over artist-customers.

Ventura native Reich has taken a different path in running his business, the largest art foundry in Ventura County. At Image, the only sparks flying are from the molten metal being poured. “We approach it as a business,” Reich said. “We just make what the artist wants.”

Reich has been casting metal for 15 years at Image, which he co-owns with James and Ian McTavish. After starting in commercial casting, they expanded into the art market about eight years ago. Since then, they have built up the art side of the foundry, drawing sculptors from all over Southern California.

After discovering an interest in drawing and sculpture while studying photography at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, Reich got a job as a gofer for a large commercial foundry and got hooked on the business. It is this grounding in the commercial side that makes for a business philosophy artists can live with.

On a typical day at the foundry, artists can be found putting the finishing touches on their sculptures while workers outside pour steel for boat propellers, hip implants and other widgets.

Spotted frogs made from bronze lie pondless in various stages of completion around the building, while miniature blue dolphins leap from green oceans. The metal menagerie includes a variety of usually water-faring creatures--workers in one room are touching up molds for bronze sea otters destined to become a coffee table.

Artist David Huenergardt is at the foundry working on a larger-than-life bronze sculpture of three horses; each is 16 feet long and 11 feet high. The half-million-dollar piece is one of the biggest that Image Casting has made.

Each horse is formed by welding together more than 27 pieces of bronze over a steel I-beam frame. Huenergardt has been working on the sculpture, an enlargement of the four-foot original titled “Running Free,” for more than a year. The final destination for the bronze equines will be a centerpiece fountain at a billion-dollar housing complex in Hong Kong.

To form the pieces, Image uses the lost-wax process, a method of metal sculpting that has been practiced since ancient times. The artist first creates the sculpture in any medium--clay, wax, wood or paper. Huenergardt used a plaster and wire-frame mold for the four-fold enlargement of his original work.

A rubber mold is made of the original and wax is poured into it to make a copy. The wax positive must be carefully retouched, because every imperfection on the wax will show up in metal.

The wax positive is then dipped in an adhesive and coated with sand made of silica. Eight coats of the white sand are applied in increasing coarseness. After the sand dries, the piece is placed in an 1,800-degree oven where, after four hours, the wax will melt away from inside.

The mold is now ready to be filled with molten metal, produced by electrical-induction heaters that can melt stainless steel at 3,000 degrees. Bronze melts at 1,800 degrees.

After pouring, the metal is left to cool. Bronze sculptures are then coated in a variety of ways. Finishes can simulate the patina of old bronze in green or any other color. To preserve the natural color of bronze, a clear finish similar to the coating for car paint is applied to the sculpture.

Using this process, Reich can cast anything from small gift-size objects to Huenergardt’s horses. Smaller originals can be enlarged up to “double and triple life-size,” Reich said.

Art is often one of the early victims in hard economic times, but Image Casting has built a reliable stable of customers.

“Like anybody in the art industry knows, work is hit or miss,” Reich said. “Any time you’re exporting in this economy, it’s good news--especially when it’s art.”