Originally published in The Vidette-Messenger of Porter County on April 28, 1981.
Marchers Olson: Sculpt it with cement
by Mary Henrichs
Special features writer
Backyard studio
Lynn Olson believes backyards make the best sculpture studios. Here Olson pushes a mixture of cement, water and steel wool among steel wires surrounding the figure of a woman. The cement sculpture is hollow and was formed by a casting process Olson devised. In the background is a piece of Olson’s work combining cement and stained glass. Sitting on the stump is a cement model for a free-to-turn shell sculpture.
(V-M: Jay Jarrett)
Lynn Olson of Valparaiso has written a book entitled, Sculpting with Cement, “because it needed to be written.”
No literature had ever been published on the subject and Olson, who is a sculptor, predicts that “in the next decades, cement will be the common sculpture medium ー economics demand it.”
Recalling his own days as a student at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, when he could afford only cement as his medium and when the sole instructions on its use consisted of technical engineering manuals, Olson produced the publication he would have liked to be able to read then.
Cement is the one substance most sculptors can still afford, Olson said. Materials for a 17-by-14-inch four legged animal made with cement and wire underpinning cost about $15 whereas a bronze casting would have been almost $1,000.
Working in his backyard studio, Lynn Olson burnishes a cement sculpture. The piece is built on a chicken wire base, reinforced with steel rods, fashioned from a sand-cement mixture shoved among wires and finished with a coating of fiber cement.
(V-M: Jay Jarrett)
Marble is very costly; plastics are expensive and the exhaust fans and other equipment needed to use them safely are even higher; clay and plaster are cheap but not permanent; steel scraps are inexpensive but the rates for gas used in welding them have skyrocketed.
In contrast, a studio and the materials for cement sculpture can be acquired for less than $100, Olson said.
Equipment consists of simple hand tools ー a paring knife, rubber gloves, rasps and files.
A shady backyard is the best place in which to work because diffused light coming through trees allows the sculptor to see the form of his work from various angles of illumination, Olson said.
The finished cement product will last and it can be built in sections so it will not be heavy to move.
Olson’s seven-foot stained glass and fiber cement sculpture, “St. Louie Blues,” has stood outside for 15 years and is weathering well. The artist transported it himself from Michigan to Missouri on a trailer.
Combining his training as an artist with the benefits of his engineering studies at the University of Illinois, Olson has spent about 12 years devising many kinds of cement sculpture techniques.
Above is a sculpture mounted on a pipe above base that is free to turn so protected bird bath can face north in summer and south in winter. A jet of water from a tiny orifice causes water in the basin to rise in an arc to attract birds. Copper tubing runs through a plastic tube inside the sculpture, out the bottom and connects to a hose.
(Photo by Lynn Olson)
Seeking to create a modeling material, he began combining cement, water and very fine grades of steel wool to get fiber cement.
Mixing the materials with hands protected by rubber gloves, he makes “something that feels like clay and can be pushed into shapes and forms ー stuck here and put there.”
The sculpture is reinforced with steel rods and wires.
Olson also learned that instead of water, he could add latex to cement, thus increasing the bonding faculties and making the sculptures more flexible and weather resistant.
For some pieces, a cement, sand and water mixture is used as the finished product or as the substance over which fiber cement is laid.
Olson has made sculptures ranging in size from fishing lures to six-foot human figures.
He has also done cement casting of portrait busts and has set stained glass into cement, making the ribs extend beyond the glass, thus producing two designs ー the linear form and the glass color.
For a fishing lure, wore is shaped with a loop at one end for the split ring and another loop at the other end for the leader. The plug is shaped with rasps and files to give it curvatures that will make it wiggle attractively when being pulled through water, and is painted with bright colors in acrylic or oil.
(Photo by Lynn Olson)
Steel reinforced fiber cement sets up in about 30 minutes and reaches a final set in about 10 hours, Olson said.
In 24 hours the material is firm enough to be whittled with a paring knife; in 48 hours it can be cut with a rasp, a file and abrasive paper; in three days it’s too hard to cut. Continued aging making cement even firmer.
After two weeks the artist can burnish his fiber cement work with the flat of a knife and apply paste wax to polish it. Olson said many people have tried to work with cement sculpture but, because of the engineering as well as artistic knowledge needed, they haven’t known how to use the materials.
The only person who had successfully done direct cement sculpture was the late Simon Rodia, an Italian immigrant with little education who built seven open wed towers ー one of the 99½ feet tall ー in Watts, Cal., between 1921 and 1954.
“With no training in engineering, he intuitively constructed strong and durable designs that survived the 1932 earthquakes and that reveal the essential connection between structural efficiency and esthetic beauty,” Olson wrote in Sculpting with Cement.
A resident of Porter County for about 15 years, Olson works at his home at 4607 Claussen Lane near Flint Lake.
Small designs, such as the decorative pendant above, can be sculpted by combining fiber-cement with small gauge wire to shape small forms on which details can be carved before burnishing or painting to finish.
(Photos of Lynn Olson)
Sculpting with Cement, which went on the market in March, was published under the name of his own company ー Steelstone Press.
Olson did all of the sculpture with which the book is illustrated, took the photographs and wrote the text.