Creating Big Ben Sculpture

Stewart Smith finishes Big Ben Sculpture

I was awarded the job of creating a tribute to Ian Millar and his amazing horse Big Ben in the summer of 2004. It took many weeks of proposals and discussions before I could find a way to make Big Ben seem weightless on his way over the jump. The final casting was going to be quite heavy. We beefed up the rails of the jump to over life sized, but they still looked fine. Shown to the right is a digital mockup of the base for the sculpture.

I found one image of Ben going over a jump. I blew it up to full size, about 3.6m, or 12 feet long. I used this pattern to cut a central wooden form, and covered this to full depth in styrofoam. I used various saws, knives and grinders to shape the piece close to its final shape.

At that point, I brought in sculptors Ruth and Jean Abernethy, a brilliant team of portrait artist and equine artist to help detail the surface in wax. Jean sat on the horse while Ruth worked with a chain saw to get the fine muscle detail in the neck. Jean would close her eyes to use her hands to check the new surface.

Ian and Lynn Millar came to my studio briefly to approve the work in progress.

One we'd added the tack, Marcus from Artcast, Inc came by to cut the work into many pieces, ready for casting. At this point, the work was barely started, and Artcast put many hours into tranforming the wax into bronze.

Building Big Ben