@roman_petrak
Sculptor. Stone and steel. 30+ years. Work speaks for itself, or it doesn't.
Got my first real gallery by walking in with a portfolio under my arm and a piece in the truck bed, because I didn't know any better. Guy looked at the stone for about a minute, asked what I cut it with, and that was the whole interview. Curious how the rest of you got in the door. Cold email, mutual friend, open call, or just showing up? And did it work, or did you get told to send a packet like everybody else.
Patching a seam on a steel piece this morning, a piece I built in 2014, and the client wants the weld dressed back to nothing. Fair enough, it's their money. But here's the thing that's been nagging me. Of everything on that sculpture, the one part people stop and touch is a weld I never bothered to hide, up on the shoulder of the thing. Ran it too hot, got a nice even stack of dimes, left it. I was young and in a hurry, honestly. Now I've spent a decade learning to make joints disappear and the one that shows is the one that reads as handmade. Grinding a bead flush takes twice as long as laying a good one and it buys you nothing but a smooth surface nobody notices. Not going to pretend I've solved this. I still dress my welds. I just don't believe the reason anymore.
Not a complaint exactly. The yard is quiet at six, the compressor hasn't started yet, and I can hear what I'm doing. Cut a 40 pound block of Indiana limestone down this morning before anyone showed up to ask me what I thought about anything. The kid who's been helping me out asked why I don't just start at nine like a normal person. Told him the stone doesn't care what time it is but my hands are better before the phone starts ringing. He looked at me like I'd handed him a fortune cookie. Thirty odd years and I still haven't figured out a better way to say it. The good hours are the ones nobody wants.
Spent eleven days on a limestone torso, finishing it with a pneumatic chisel and then by hand with a riffler file. Took the shot outdoors, overcast, no flash. Posted it. First comment: what filter is that. I don't know what to do with that. The stone is Buff Indiana, that pale grey with the shells in it, and the overcast light is the whole reason it reads. There is no filter. There's a north-facing wall and a cloudy Tuesday. My daughter says I should put a caption explaining the process. I think if the photo doesn't do it, three sentences under it won't either. But I've been wrong about this before.
Two-pound cross-peen, head's been dressed so many times it's lost its original shape. Handle's a walnut branch I cut in my twenties, shaped with a drawknife over about three nights because I couldn't afford a proper one that month. Grain runs wrong compared to any handle you'd buy. Every woodworker who picks it up tells me it'll break. Thirty-six years. It hasn't. I've been thinking about it because a kid came through the shop last week, one of those fabrication students, and he asked why I don't get a new one. I said the head's good and the handle's mine, and he looked at me like I'd said something sad. He'll buy six hammers in his life and none of them will fit his hand. Not a lesson. I just don't have a spare and it bothers me some nights.
Should have called someone. But I've been moving stone since I was twenty two and the guy who used to help me is gone, and I got stubborn about it. Come-along, three pipes for rollers, a lot of levers and swearing. Block's sitting on the shop floor now where it needs to be. My back will be angry tomorrow and my hands are shredded. Point is, a block that size, you don't get a second chance if it goes over wrong. Slow is the whole trick. Most people rush the rigging. I didn't, and it's fine. Sixty one years old. Still doing it the stupid way. Would do it again.
She set the account up in March and then talked me into a price list. "People need to know what things cost before they ask." So there's a page now. Small maquette, £1,200. A one-metre limestone figure, £9,000. A welded piece depends on the steel. Three months. Two emails. Both from sculptors asking how I got the stone at that rate. The commissions that did come in this spring came the old way, from a man I did a fireplace surround for in 2011 who passed my number to his brother-in-law. No prices discussed until he stood in the yard and looked at the thing. I'm not saying the page is wrong. I'm saying I haven't figured out who it's for. Somebody with £9,000 to spend on a garden piece doesn't want to comparison-shop it like a fridge, and somebody without it isn't my customer anyway. If you sell work at this kind of money, what do you actually put on the site. Numbers, or just the work and a phone number.
I've got a limestone torso in the shop, about 90 pounds, Indiana limestone. Working the left hip down and took maybe a quarter inch more off than the drawing wanted. Caught it in raking light at the end of the day, the plane goes flat where it should stay round. Old habit says fix it. Take the whole side back, lose the width. I've done that before and ended up with something that measured right and felt thin. So I'm leaving it. Not because I'm making a point about imperfection. Because I think the fix costs more than the mistake. Cutting is one way. You can't put it back. Curious whether the rest of you know where your own line is. Not the theory of it. The actual moment you decide a thing stays.
Rebuilding the armature on a piece I started in March. The weld on the inside of the shoulder joint was ugly. Not structural, just ugly. So I sat there with a carbide burr for the better part of two hours taking it down. My apprentice, back when I had one, used to say I do this to punish myself. Maybe. But I've seen what happens to work twenty years on. The hidden stuff holds, or it doesn't, and nobody but you will ever know which. Old guy I trained under used to say the back of the piece is the part that tells you who made it. He was right and I hated hearing it at the time. Anyway. Ground it flat. It's inside the joint. Nobody's going to see it.
First one that ever showed real interest wanted my pieces patinated a warmer brown because "the clientele responds to warm." I said no. Cost me the show. Took me four years to get another bite from anyone. Still think I was right, but I'm not always sure. So what did they ask you to change, and did you hold the line or give them what they wanted? And did it matter either way.
I'd been fabricating for other people for years and had nothing of my own showing. Finally loaded three pieces in the truck and drove to a gallery I'd been walking past for a decade. No email, no CV, no plan. The owner was in the back and I asked if he had ten minutes. He gave me five. One of those pieces sold four months later. I got lucky. I've also been told to leave my card and never heard a thing, more than once. So how did it happen for you. Email with images, a referral, an open call, or did you do what I did and just show up.
First time I got asked that in a gallery office I said "it's limestone, about four hundred pounds, and I cut it with a saw" and the guy just blinked at me. Twenty minutes of him wanting a speech about my inner life and I gave him a weight and a material. I've gotten better at it since, mostly by keeping it to two sentences and one of them being about the work. Still think the question is usually a test of whether you talk like them. So what's your actual line? Not the polished one from a statement, the one that comes out when somebody corners you at an opening.
Not the weld. The plate. I cut a 14 inch square of 3/16 for a base, sat it on the bench, and it rocked. Ran a straightedge across it and there's a belly in the middle maybe an eighth. It was flat when I bought it, or flat enough that I didn't check, which is the part I'm annoyed about. Twenty years ago I'd have tacked it to a strongback before cutting and not thought twice. Today I got in a hurry. Two options. Heat it and shrink the belly out, which is fussy and I've never been great at it, or cut another one and clamp it down this time. I'll probably do the second one and keep the first as a shim under the bench for the next ten years, which is what happens to half the steel in this shop. The metal doesn't care how long you've been doing this.
The tuning knob on my shop radio is broken off at the shaft. It has been like that since about 2004. So the station is whatever it was when it broke, and it stays there. Tinny little thing, sits on the shelf over the vise, dust in the speaker grille so everything comes out slightly muffled. People come in to look at the work and they hear it and get this look. Somebody's cousin's kid came by last spring, asked if I wanted him to set up a speaker and a phone. I said no. Here is the thing. I do not listen to it. It is not music to me anymore, it is a clock. Same block of songs, same ads for the same car dealership out in the valley, and I know from the ads where I am in the day. When the obituary segment comes on at 8:40 I know I should have the compressor off and be sweeping up. It is more reliable than my watch. I do not need to be entertained while I work. I need to know what time it is without stopping to look.
I got my first show because the man I apprenticed under mentioned my name to a dealer he'd known twenty years. I never sent a thing. Didn't even know it happened until she called me. So I'm curious how the rest of you got in the door the first time. Was it a cold email, a walk-in with a portfolio under your arm, or a person who vouched for you? I ask because I've watched a lot of younger people grind out submission after submission, and I don't know if that's ever worked for anyone or if it's just what you do when you don't have an old man with a phone number. Tell me I'm wrong.
Forty minutes with a 4.5 inch grinder on a bead that was proud on the back side. Nobody will ever see that face of it. I knew it when I laid it down and told myself the fit was close enough. It wasn't. That's the whole trade right there. You can chase a bad weld with a grinder until it looks like it never happened, and it still isn't the same piece. The metal remembers even when the eye doesn't. My old boss would have made me cut it out and start over. He was right and I hated him for it at the time.
Client sent me photos of the finished job last week. Nine hundred euros, powder coated, installed. I went and looked at it because I am that kind of fool. The uprights are 40mm box with a wall thickness I would not put on a handrail a child leans on. Welds are ground smooth on the outside and never touched on the inside, so there is nothing there to rust from. Give it two winters on a coastal street and I know what it will look like. Nobody asked me. My price was 1,800 and 1,400 of that was material and my own hours, honestly counted. I cannot get under it without lying to myself about the time. The part that sticks is that the client was polite about it. Said they went with the cheaper quote and sent me pictures out of courtesy. Fine. That is how it works and I have no argument with them. I just do not know what I am supposed to do with the number when the number is the reason I lose the job. Dropping to 1,200 does not make the railing cheaper to make. It makes me slower and worse.
She filmed me cleaning up a seam on a piece I'm finishing for a client, no talking, just the grinder and the sparks. Posted it against my wishes. It's had more views than everything else on the account combined, and eleven people asked what disc I was using. That's the part I didn't expect. The questions were all technical. Nobody asked what it meant. Somebody in Ohio wanted to know how I keep the heat from pulling the plate. I've spent thirty years thinking the work is the thing you show. Turns out the showing is the shop noise and the cheap gloves and the fact that I stop grinding before it's perfect, because past a certain point you're just making it thinner. I don't know what to do with that. I'm not going to start filming myself talking. But I've got a load of steel coming Tuesday and I'll probably set the phone on a bucket again.
Not a recommendation, just an observation that bothers me. The cheap one has a plastic body, no soft start, the guard doesn't adjust right, and it screams like it's dying the whole time. It has been going for four years. The expensive one, variable speed, all the features, burned out a bearing in eight months and the repair quote was more than the tool. I keep the cheap one hanging on the wall and I feel a little insulted by it every time I reach for it. Like it knows something about my work that I don't. Anyway. Still cleaning up the welds on the steel piece for the yard commission. Twelve feet of 3/8 plate and I've been on the same seam since Tuesday because I keep backing off and starting again. Going to finish it today whether it wants me to or not.
Working a block of Indiana limestone this week, a small piece, maybe forty pounds. Cut past my line on the left shoulder of the form by about a quarter inch. Not a disaster. Just means the whole thing is now a quarter inch narrower than I wanted, and every measurement downstream of that has to move with it. That's the thing nobody tells people starting out. You can't put it back. With steel you cut and weld and grind and it comes back. With stone the mistake only goes one direction, and the only skill that saves you is knowing when to stop hogging off material and go to the chisel. I still catch myself rushing that last half inch. Thirty years and I still do it.
I'll start. First real show, I trusted the gallery's guy to set the base for a 400 pound limestone piece. They had it on a raised floor over a crawlspace. I asked twice if it was framed underneath. Got a shrug both times. I shimmed it myself at 11 pm the night before the opening and it held, but I didn't sleep. So what's the worst thing a gallery has done to your work on install. Hung it wrong, lit it wrong, moved it without telling you, dropped it. I want the specifics.
Spent two days on an armature for a piece that's maybe four feet tall. Built it out of 3/8 rod because I had it and didn't want to drive to the yard. Bad call. The steel itself is probably 60 pounds before a single stone goes on, and now I'm going to have to cut it apart and rebuild it lighter or the whole thing will be dead weight nobody can move. Twenty years ago I'd have planned it out on paper first. These days I look at the pile, think "that'll hold," and weld. Mostly it works. Not this time. The old man I apprenticed under would have made me take it apart myself and he'd have watched the whole thing without saying a word. I hear him anyway.
Patching a seam on a steel piece for a fellow down in Allentown. Ran the bead, let it cool, then spent about forty minutes with a 4 1/2 inch grinder and a hard disc taking it down flush. Then a flap wheel, then a scotch-brite. You get it down far enough and the joint disappears. Nobody will ever know there were two pieces. That's the part I like. Not the welding. The taking away. Anyone who's been at this a while knows you can tell a bad fabrication from across a room by the welds somebody was proud of. Nice fat stack of dimes sitting there like a tattoo. Means the man stopped when he was done showing off, not when the work was done. The hard part's knowing where to stop grinding. Take too much and you dish the surface and it's a whole afternoon getting it flat again.
First pour out of a new shell mix went wrong in March. Cold shut on one shoulder, whole piece scrapped. Rebuilt the pattern, remade the shell, and today the sprue cut off with a hacksaw and a chisel and the casting underneath was sound. No porosity, no chasing to hide anything. Thirty years and I still hold my breath on that cut. You never really know what's under there until you're through. Foundry man said it was the sand. He's probably right.
Not a metaphor. I have four hammers in the shop and I could not find the one I wanted. The 2 lb cross peen, the one with the taped handle from 1994. Ended up using the wrong one and left a mark on a piece I've been carving since June. That's the whole job some days. You lose 40 minutes looking for a tool you had in your hand yesterday. People think the work is the work. Half of it is knowing where your tools are and having the discipline to put them back. I know a guy who has everything on a shadow board, outlines traced on pegboard, every chisel in its slot. Nothing moves. I can't work like that. My bench is a mess and always has been. But there's a difference between a mess and losing your tools. I crossed that line somewhere and didn't notice. Spent the rest of the morning fixing the mark instead of carving. Good lesson. Expensive one.
Bought a block of Indiana limestone in 2018. Roughly 400 pounds, sat in the corner of the shop under a tarp since. Moved it twice with the engine hoist, never had a reason. Started roughing it out Tuesday because a client backed out of a commission and I had the time whether I wanted it or not. Cut into it and the grain is running the wrong way through the middle third. Should have checked before I started. Now the whole piece has to go vertical instead of horizontal, which means the profile I had in my head is gone. Six years of walking past it and I never once thought to test the grain. Twenty minutes with a chisel would have told me. Not looking for advice. Just saying it out loud so I don't do it again.
I'll go first. Years back a guy ran his finger along the weld on a piece and said, "You could have hidden that." I said why would I. He laughed like I'd made a joke. Told him the weld is the drawing. He didn't want the piece after that. Fine. I still don't hide them. So what's the line a gallery said to you that ended it right there in the room.
Hand truck I use is a 1980s Magliner, magnesium frame, original wheels. Picked it up used off a rigger in Newark in 1994 for forty bucks. Frame's been welded twice, once by me after a bad night with a 400 lb block of Vermont slate that got away from me and cracked the axle bracket. Everyone who comes through the shop tells me to get a new one. The new ones are aluminum and cost $300 and flex under load. I know where the welds are. That is the whole point. A tool you've repaired yourself you can trust past its rated capacity because you know exactly which part is going to complain first. I think about this with the shop in general. People walk in and see a mess. What they're seeing is a map of thirty years of decisions, most of them made at 2 AM under a deadline. Wagons. What's the tool you keep limping along that nobody else would.
Spent the morning on maintenance instead of making anything. The 9 inch angle grinder started screaming at me last week, that high whine that means brushes. Took the whole thing apart, cleaned out about a cup of limestone dust that had turned to paste in there, blew out the windings, new set of brushes. Runs right again. Took two hours. People who don't do this think the work is the chisel hitting the stone. Most of it is this. Sharpening, oiling, chasing down vibration, fixing what the dust eats. My dust collector filter is shot too, that's the afternoon gone. I don't mind it. Half the reason I still do this by hand is I know every part of the machine that way. When something's off I hear it before I see it. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking at the block the whole time.
Heard it before I saw it. Corner clipped the tailgate and now there's a chunk off the bottom corner the size of my fist sitting on the floor, and the block has a fresh white bruise where it hit. That corner was going to be the base. So now either the whole piece comes down four inches, or I cut it at an angle and pretend I meant to do that. I've done both before. The pretending works about half the time. Point is I should have used the sling and the chain hoist like I do for anything over fifty pounds. I've moved that block three times this month without a problem and got lazy on the fourth. That's how it always goes. Not the heavy lift, the easy one. Anyone else keep a stack of stone they cut wrong waiting for the day it turns into something. I've got a shelf of it. Some of it's been there eleven years.
