'Man and His Soul' installed at the University of the Witwatersrand

Louis Wald Tuesday 22 November 2011

Following the preparation here 'Man and his Soul' was installed at the island below the Tower of Light near the Commerce, Law and Management Faculty building at the University of the Witwatersrand over the last few days.

Erecting the work was straight forward. The crane and trailer bearing the work were able to drive right upto the installation location.

The following photos show the maquette in front of the finished work and key people including Mike Cañadas, the bronze caster in the red shirt and Louis Wald behind it. Comparing the enlarged and original versions had become a very well rehearsed activity over the life of the project.

We had selected a classical structural steel baseplate design for attaching the work to the foundation. This method provided both structural strength and the ability to fine tune the alignment of the work.

The bolts fitted the baseplate perfectly. However the formwork for the round pocket had kicked during the concrete pour. This meant that the sculpture was higher than planned and that plans for a 50mm granite base had to change.

Initially the patina was intended to be a silver colour similar to the original maquette. However after a detailed investigation it becamer clear that a high quality silver or aluminium style patina was very difficult to acheive. We did not want the patina to be compared unfavourably with that of the the excellent "Concatenation" work made of brushed flat stainless steel plate nearby. So we opted for a very classical lighter end of the spectrum "French Brown" patina.

Approaching the sculpture from the West.

See here for the blog on the newspaper article in the Star about this work.