[PSUBS-MAILIST] Cell Cast Acrylic tour?

[Alan James via Personal_Submersibles]

Jon,on the way back from the Islamorada conference I tracked down what I thought was Bruce Beasley's gallery in Berkeley, California, but it ended up being his workshop at his home. He kindly invited me in for a cup of tea, and was amazed that someone from New Zealand & the Psubs group knew of his exploits in the thick casting of acrylic & of his work for the American Navy developing acrylic spheres with Gerry Stachiw. He is a good friend of Phil Nuyten and they both studied North West Native American art at the same institution.For those who don't know his story, he was a successful young sculpture specializing in metal, but took an interest in acrylic. He was selected along with a number of other artists to put in a proposal for a sculpture for the State of California. His proposal, which surprised everyone, was for an 11ft x 5ft acrylic sculpture. He was selected. What the judges didn't know was that industry had only managed to cast acrylic 2" thick & he had managed 4". He told me if he failed he could have been sued.He bought a huge autoclave & put windows on it to observe the process. He worked out how to do it & his second attempt made a successful thick casting.His 11ft x 5ft sculpture "Apollon" brought him to the attention of the American Navy & Gerry Stachiw, who commissioned him to build a deep diving sphere.Bruce said the cost of every sphere failure was about the price of a new VW car & that he would go home and tell his wife he just pushed another VW off a cliff.Shortly after my visit to him he was having an exhibition of 3d printed sculptures, so was keeping up with technology and probably using cad to design his larger metal sculptures.I am sure he would tell his story to Psubs if we had a conference in the vicinity, however I am not sure how active he would be now. I am also not sure if he would give away much on his secret formula.He gave me a large book which he signed that covered his sculpture, & had a section on acrylic & his work with the navy. Very kind of him.Alan


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  On Fri, 2 Sep 2022 at 10:52 pm, Jon Wallace via Personal_Submersibles<personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:   _______________________________________________
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