Kevin Contos: Little Things Mean A Lot

KEVIN: Tom Meier and Julie Guthrie were very influential. They sculpted true scale highly details beautifully proportioned work. That style is out of favor as most companies have tried to imitate the larger cartoonish style of the European companies. Tom and Julie do toy work primarily these days.

JIM: What are the most recent developments, technological or otherwise, in sculpting?

KEVIN: What we do is very cheap. The mold making process is inexpensive compared to plastic toys and action figures. The technology has not changed much. For the smaller companies I don't see any major technological improvements making molds is still quite an art that requires a lot of experience. We are still dealing with some relatively small companies. It costs between 10-100 dollars to make a rubber mold. A simple mold for a plastic action figure costs thousands of dollars per piece. I just saw a piece of equipment that will do a 3-D scan, but it costs about 80 thousand dollars.

JIM: If you could look at a graph of your professional life, where would the low and high points be?

KEVIN: Ain't nowhere to go but up. If your gonna be in business for yourself you have to learn to ride out the ups and downs. There have been an awful lot of downs in the business and starting in the early 90s a lot of major companies went out of business and some of the best people who have ever been in this fields are no longer in it. You deal primarily with small businesses and some of those people are jerks. You get used to it. It's like any other business.

KEVIN: I have learned to look at art as a job. I know some truly outstanding artists who are doing schlock work to pay the bills. Usually a company sees something selling from another company and tries to imitate it. Currently everyone is doing pirates. A couple years ago everyone was doing Samari. You really don't get to do what you want and you can do superb work and the client will not like or it may not fit in with exactly what they had in mind. This is nothing new. I by no means am comparing myself to Michelangelo, but as he finished David his client the Pope was walking around the base of the piece and decided that David’s nose was too big. Michelangelo knew that it was perfect and the Pope was looking from the wrong perspective. Instead of arguing he grabbed his mallet, a chisel, and some marble dust. He climbed the scaffold and did some gentle tapping. Not touching the statue but he let some marble dust fall from his hands. He then asked the Pope how it looked and he said perfect. If you are going to do any sort of artwork or any craft that requires the client’s approval you had better develop a thick skin.

KEVIN: Yes. I was just involved in a bit of a competition called "Visions in putty (since we sculpt with epoxy putty)" it was centered around a general theme of gladiator. I submitted 2 pieces. One of a very muscular female gladiator called Virago. I was pretty happy with the results. The second piece I did was a retiarius, one of the trident and net guys, except he was the defeated combatant laying hewn upon the sand in his final death throes. I have gotten quite a few compliments on it and I did it because every body else would pose their own figures against it.

KEVIN: Other than getting paid. Planning. Most people do not know how to visualize the steps involved in t creating the final product.

JIM: Do you have any words of wisdom for people wanting to get into the sculpting field?

KEVIN: I will quote G. K. Chesterton "Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of any picture is the frame." I take this to mean, focus on what you are trying to say through your work.

KEVIN: Virgil Finlay. A superb fantasy illustrator from the golden age of pulp fantasy and science fiction. He did beautiful work using a very intricate stipple technique that few have mastered. Burne Hogarth is the illustrator’s illustrator and his fabulous books will be the standard for many years to come. Norman Rockwell was a superb illustrator whose work is often overlooked or dismissed as too commercial or schmaltzy. Any true look at his masterly technique will reveal subtle brilliance. One of my favorite sculptors is Michael Garman who currently lives in Colorado Springs. You could easily spend a day in his studio admiring his intricate cityscapes populated with his soulful and very human charactures. He started from with virtually nothing bus parlayed his skill as a sculptor and salesmanship into a very successful and well-known studio.

The proof is in the puddy.