MANCARDI²
Read 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 across all media, who color our lives, their murals, descend directly from prehistoric paintings and more recently from frescoes to become urban art. Musicians, the latest additions, offer an additional art form to showcase. Passionate people who embellish a moment of life on the street.
We make our bronzes using the “lost wax” method, which consists of creating a sculpture directly in wax. The wax is modeled when it is sufficiently flexible and heated. It can also be sculpted when it is colder and harder, using suitable tools (dental technician tools can be used).
When several wax sculptures are finalized, we go to the “Barthélémy Art” foundry in Drôme. And there, the magic of fire will operate, after assembling the sculptures, having connected them all together, this is called “mounting a cluster”, an iron cylinder is slipped around them. High-definition plaster is poured under vacuum inside this cylinder, drowning the cluster of wax sculptures.
After drying, the cylinder is placed in a wax removal oven, the temperature rises 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.
