Iron Worker, 2025

Mancardi2  

Mancardi2, reads Mancardi squared, Jean-Jacques and Christine, create bronze sculptures and graffiti with four hands.

The world of Workers, Graffiti Artists and most recently that of street musicians fuels our inspiration.

The workers, in the continuity of the great cathedral builders and to honor these men who build our places of life and work.

Graffiti artists, who express themselves on all media, who color our lives, their murals, descend straight from prehistoric paintings and more recently from frescoes to become urban art.

Musicians, the latest arrivals, an additional art form to showcase. Passionate people who enhance a moment of street life.

We make our bronzes using the “lost wax" method, which consists of creating a sculpture directly in wax.

Wax can be modeled when it is sufficiently soft and warmed. It can also be sculpted when it is colder and harder, using suitable tools.

When several wax sculptures are finalized, we go to the “Barthélémy Art" foundry in Drôme.

And there, the magic of fire will operate, after having assembled the sculptures, having connected them all together, we call this “mounting a cluster", we slide an iron cylinder around them. High definition plaster is poured under vacuum inside this cylinder, drowning the cluster of wax sculpture.

After drying, the cylinder is placed in a wax removal oven, the temperature rising slowly over several days to cook the plaster, melt and remove the wax.

In the last few hours, the oven rises to a very high temperature, just before turning the cylinder over to pour the molten bronze (1100°) inside, which naturally takes the place left by the wax in the plaster.

Then, you will have to recover the bronze sculpture cluster, cut all the pieces with the grinder, chisel them, sand them and finally patinate them.

The sculptures are presented on metal structures, wood, and recently on plexiglass, which we graffiti using airbrushes and acrylic markers.