Aldo Casanova, Resident Artist Lecture 1973

Aldo Casanova gives a lecture and shares slides of his sculpture practice, along with slides of his students’ work. Casanova talks to the students about his process of working in sculpture, including how he looks at animal forms and experiments with various materials, such as limestone and oak. Casanova explains how he creates clay studies which he then transforms into marble. Casanova then shares his process of working with plaster on steel armature: he builds the material up, carves away, and then brings these plasters to a foundry where they are cast in bronze. Casanova goes on to explain the process of working with cast wax sheets on clay, which allows him to create texture for his sculptures. Casanova then speaks about his time as a Rome Prize winner, and how the environment in Italy allowed him to shift to the human form as well, drawing from Greek mythology to create an energy of dual containment/compression in his work. While in Rome, Casanova did a series of torsos constructed with wax sheets which also involved working with polyurethane foam coated with hot wax. Once this step was completed, the surface was varnished with sandpaper and turpentine. The sandpaper allowed the wax to be spread evenly for a smooth finish, then cast in sand to produce a denser bronze as the final work.