The Process of Sculpture (in Limerick)

Sherman Monument in New York City

NPS/M. Canfield

Bronze sculpture is created by teams of people over months and years. The process is long and technical, but this poem is short and light. Follow a sculpture’s journey - five rhyming lines at a time.

Behold an artistic transition,
The steps to complete each commission.
The process took days
With many a phase.
Let’s go see it come to fruition!

Stakeholders began to select,
What is it the art should reflect?
What story and being
Should viewers be seeing?
What feelings might this work project?

In clay, then Gus worked to express
The features the sitters possess.
The detail sure shows
That Sherman did pose
Some eighteen times to his distress.

Saint-Gaudens would then supervise
As helpers began to resize.
A machine would infer
The points to transfer
And copies to scale could arise.

Then cover the clay in a slime
Of gypsum and sand and some lime.
Creating a mold
Of textures and folds,
The plaster would dry in good time.

When excellence was unsurpassed,
The molds could leave Cornish at last.
To foundries they went.
Hot metals they met.
The statue in bronze was thus cast.

The process was close to complete
And patina could finish the feat
But layers of gold
Are stunning and bold
To greet people out on the street.

The man on the horse is on view
In a park for your neighbors and you.
That bright golden glare
Was crafted with care,
Though the process of art’s never through.

Now what should a sculptor enshrine
In art that may last a lifetime?
The impact’s not small
If art is for all.
What values might art help define?

The monument to General William Tecumseh Sherman by Augustus Saint-Gaudens was unveiled in 1903. The luminous sculpture continues to stand in New York City’s Grand Army Plaza. Smaller recastings of certain elements of the memorial are in the collection of Saint-Gaudens NHP including a bust of the general and the winged figure of Victory.