Palmer artist casts full-size statues for Seward

PALMER — When people stop by Pat Garley’s shop these days they’re confronted with two statues: A life-size gold prospector and a life-size malamute.

Garley says that while people have complimented him on the prospector, it’s clear that most visitors are more interested in the dog.

“Alaskans, they’re all dog people,” he said.

And they’re not shy about giving him advice — critiquing the curliness of the dog’s tail or the spacing between its eyes.

“People here, you’ve got to get the dog right,” Garley said.

Over the past 14 years Garley has been casting bronze statues. The piece he’s currently working on — he’s actually been working on it for a year now — is a commission from the Seward Iditarod Trailblazers Association.

“This piece is a prospector and a dog heading up the Iditarod Trail circa 1910,” he said.

The commission called for a lop-eared malamute rather than a pure-bred dog. It’s going to be installed atop a 6-foot-tall boulder in the parking lot of the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.

Most people associate the word Iditarod with a race from Anchorage or maybe Wasilla or Willow to Nome. Garley said he’s sometimes asked how Seward figures into the whole thing.

“Seward was Mile 0 for the Iditarod Trail,” he said.

Which is why the prospector he depicts is just starting out on his more than thousand-mile walk to Nome. His gear is fresh and his dog recently acquired.

“He’s got the biggest dog he could buy, beg, borrow or steal,” Garley said.

Though neither the dog nor the prospector are faithful representations of them, Garley said he got two local dogs and one of his neighbors to model for the piece.

“He was handy and he fit the build and type,” Garley said of his neighbor.

Though he’s been working in bronze for a long time, Garley said this is actually his first life-size person. Because of that, he brought in another local artist, Justin Spurlin.

“He’s responsible for at least half of the art,” Garley said. “My specialty has always been wildlife.”

The process for casting a bronze statue is, in a word, complex.

First, Garley said, he built a frame out of wire. The frame was covered with foam boards, which were then carved down to make a rough mock-up.

Next, he and Spurlin covered the foam with clay. That’s the stage they’re in now. Garley said Monday he’s working on details like the weave pattern in the clothing and smoothing out rough patches.

All-told, he said, he’s put 100 pounds of clay on the models. If they were solid clay, he said, that’d be more like 500 pounds.

Once the clay work is done, he said, he’ll make rubber casts of the two statutes then cut those casts into sections small enough for him to handle in the next few stages.

The rubber molds are covered in plaster to offer support then used to make wax versions of the statutes.

The wax is then covered in a kind of ceramic slurry and dipped again and again until the mix is a quarter inch thick all the way around.

The ceramic is then fired in a kiln. The ceramic hardens and the wax melts out, leaving a void space in the right shape to take the bronze.

The next step — pouring in the bronze — you’d think would be pretty close to the final step. You’d be wrong.

“When they’re poured you’re only half way,” Garley said.

Because then you’ve got to grind out the rough spots, polish it up, add your coloration and weld all the pieces together.

“It just takes time,” is how Garley describes his work.

He said he’s happy with what he and Spurlin have managed to create.

“Between us we’ve turned out something I’m pretty proud of,” he said.