Small Crumpled Frog, Fingers Entwined ©Beau Smith December 2021 materials: copper, cement, bronze, steel Height: 12″

This frog is based on a large frog that my father made many years ago. It happened to be a really great frog that someone who was selling my frogs and my father’s and brothers frogs got from my father and decided to keep – buy from him (for a very good price) – instead of sell. The design was really great with the interlocking fingers, and the way that the metal was crunched. The body was round and the head was long and happy and the eyes were quiet. It looked contemplative and toad like. Frankly, my little frog does not hold a candle to that frog. But that really does not matter. That is not exactly what I was after. I just wanted to capture an experience. This little frog is like a simple little sketch. I like him for that reason.

Killing two or more birds with one stone, 1. I experimented with filling the frog with cement, and crumpling thinner sheet copper than I have usually used in the past, and 2. I caught something of the design and character of my dad’s large toad that I admired.

This fellow who owned the frog brought it to me to repair, so I had some time (more time actually than I needed, I had the thing for over a year) to study the frog. I have not yet made a large frog based on that frog. And I don’t even know that I will or that I will make it in exactly the same way. That said, I will tell you this: that in the past every time that I would work with my father on frogs, I would learn something. About making frogs, that is.

I didn’t work with him directly a lot. I worked by myself most of the time. My brother did work directly with him a lot, but I worked by myself. But sometimes in the early days, I would come down to John’s Island to hang out with my father and make a frog or two and learn some things from him. Whenever I did that, I got a lot better at making frogs. A while ago the Atlanta botanical gardens had me repair one of my father’s frogs, and one of my brothers frogs as well, that were in the gardens. (note 1)

When I had those frogs that I was working on for the Atlanta botanical gardens to repair them, I used it as an opportunity to study them and make some frogs just like the ones that my dad had made. In that way, even though I wasn’t working directly with my father, I was improving myself learning by copying as exactly as possible what he did.

The small frog that I made here is not exactly what my father built. Like I say, it’s a sketch. It’s based on the inspiration of that frog. A second thing, as I say, I had going on here is that I’ve been working with very thin copper foil and this frog was made by thin copper foil.

I’m always learning about how to use materials. So I’m improving my jobs in very many ways not just from, say for example, learning from my father. I’m also learning to improve my chops because I work with many materials and I learn different ways to make the frog. In fact, I could say that every time I make a frog, I do something different in the way of how I work with the materials. In this way I develop mastery not just of working with the metal but also in just simply creating art.

I’m not one to work with the same material and never work with any other type of material. Even though I am a metal sculptor and that has been my specialty, I like working in many different materials. Too many perhaps. But another way to put it is I’m always interested in building a better mouse trap. Can that actually be done? Can I actually build a better mouse trap? Because I think the whole phrase suggests that you can’t build a better mouse trap. That’s the whole point. It’s going after some impossible fantasy.

Google it.

Okay, so Waldo Emerson came up with this and he suggested if you could actually build a better mouse trap and come up with the next great idea that’s really fantastic. So he doesn’t, I guess, say that you can’t build a better mousetrap. (note 2)

Anyhow, working with a thinner foil type of copper allows me to crimp it and bend it in ways that I can’t do with the larger stuff. And so it allows me to crimp and bend a small piece the way that a larger piece would crimp and bend with a larger thicker copper. This is actually such a big deal that I might even say I’m divulging a secret! One trick with this foil is to wrap it around thick steel. (These are secrets! That is why, if you are a sculptor, or even simply an artist, you should keep reading my blog.) Another trick is to create a form and then fill it with something like cement. In fact, that is what I did with this piece and it works fine because the piece is small. If the piece were larger, I would have to fill it with something that was lighter. I’ve looked into using aerated cement. I’m investigating that. Aerated cement involves putting air bubbles in the cement using foam that you create from soap and water. This creates something called aircrete, which is actually a fantastic material that has been around for quite awhile. Aircrete can actually be used in building houses and make it cheaper to build them.

I’m also very interested in aircrete domes. That is, domes made out of aircrete. The roof creates its own type of armature… Since it is a dome, it tends to be self supporting. There is a lot about this on the net.