Hello and welcome to the St. Charles Lwanga Project page! This page is dedicated to the St. Charles Lwanga statue being carved for the St. Katharine Drexel cemetery in Frederick Maryland and will hopefully be ready for the dedication in early June 2024. I will be providing weekly photo updates of progress to track how progress is coming along.
Who is St. Charles Lwanga, you ask? Well, you can find out most quickly as with anything these days at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lwanga). He is the patron saint of youth and Catholic action in most of tropical Africa.
But what did he look like? That’s a good question if you’re going to carve a statue. Unfortunately I am aware of one single photograph, here. He’s the guy in the upper center with the hat. At least I think it’s a hat, the picture is sketchy. There is also is a blown up version, but that’s as good as it gets.
This webpage will provide an accounting of the process of making his statue. Scroll to the bottom and work your way up to see the progress from the beginning or just scroll a little down from here to see the latest!
April 30, 2024 St. Charles the Evicted
We knew some day that it would come to this. St. Charles Lwanga, it’s time to go. We shared some good times (remember the time I sanded the skin off my thumb accidentally on your folds? Good times…), and plenty of quiet moments together, but it’s time for you to go. Even Ben Franklin said that fish and house guests start to stink after three days. You’ve turned out well- sure you’re not perfect (I’m not thrilled with your nose but I like your ears!) - but now it’s time to move on. Sorry I put you outside right before a thunderstorm, but let’s face it- there are plenty of thunderstorms in your future. I leave you all with the final photo, which I call “St. Charles Lwanga Waiting for the Bus.”
April 28, 2024 Are We There Yet?
Why yes, yes I think we are. We are done with the carving, the shaping, and the scraping- just a little more sanding to go. Well, a lot more sanding to go. But I think we have arrived at the final form. And soon St. Charles Lwanga can exit my shop and I can get on with other things. He’s still pretty heavy though, in the + 200lbs range I think. I can’t pick him up, I can only tilt him. But give me a week more of sanding and scraping some rough spots and he will be ready for his forever home.
April 21, 2024 Details, Details
I think I have reached the end of the line as far as carving goes, all that remains is some details and a whole lot of scraping, sanding, and polishing. The hands, ears (special thanks to my ear model Marien!), and the face were this weekend’s focus and while I am not (nor ever will) be completely happy with the end results, I think the details are enough that if I continue to play with things we will run into a “Michael Jackson’s nose” situation so it is better to stop while I’m ahead. There are plenty of stray chisel teeth marks and missed spots that require attention. However, I will certainly now meet my self-imposed May 15th deadline.
April 14, 2024 Folded! (and put away)
It took some 10 hours of my weekend, but the folds are DONE. That is D.O.N.E. It was not easy- not so much the carving of a fold as making the folds look relatively realistic so that they look convincing. I’ll leave it to the viewer to determine that. Next up is slimming down those enormous man-hands (Seinfeld reference) and making the square look more like a book and turning the Cinnabon on his shoulder into a realistic knot. Overall, I think St. Chuck is coming along well. And I got about one month to complete the full statue. No pressure. Some photos are provided, I especially like the one from below as he looks enormous- all 3 ft of him.
April 12, 2024 Folds!
I gotta say, the hardest thing to do so far is make realistic folds in a robe! “It’s just a bunch of foldy things in and out, what could be so hard,” you say? Well, unfortunately folds aren’t random, they come from somewhere and go to somewhere else, all together, so it looks like …well, folds. But I think so far so good. I should finish the rough in of the folds by tomorrow and move on to the drapiness of the fold across his shoulders. Thanks to Mindy of of Vintage MC (www.vintage-mc.com) on East Patrick Street for the loan of a mannequin to drape a robe across for a little bit of modeling realism.
He still needs work on his hands to bring them into size and refinement on his face, but those will come later. Satisfactory progress so far, I think. But man, do I want to make some small sculptures to hide around town! Another month or so…
April 7, 2024 So Long, Blockhead
I got tired of looking at St. Chuck’s massive block head as its proportion was throwing me off, so it was time to focus on bringing it into shape, if not actually detailing it. Over the week I have also rounded out the arms and given some separation between the arms and the body. I am still not happy with the head, but it is the right size at least for now. he’s still a little too flat-faced for me… envisioning a head in 3-D is no easy task.
April 2, 2024. Time to Round it out
Okay, it’s time to make the LEGO blockiness go away, starting just below the arms since I need the edges to go away in order to round out the arms. The legs, which will be under a robe, are now starting to take their proper size but they still lack a lot of detail of the folds- but they do accentuate the hugeness of the head! Don’t worry, that will trim down too, but that is saved for last.
I think skipped the Stage 3 “This looks awful!” of the Stages of Creativity and gone right straight into the Stage 4 “I think I can see it coming together…” Well I can at least, I look at it enough. I don’t care for that Stage 3 anyway, it’s a confidence sucker.
March 31, 2024. Okay, Progress- I Can See Something… a Lego Guy?
Visible progress as His Blockiness is slowly whitling down to a more relatable shape. Carving stone is very much a “sneaking up upon” process; unlike clay where if you go too far you can just glom on some more, in stone once you whack it off it’s gone. So it’s slow going just to make sure you’re getting it right. The hands are outlined now, the Cinnabon on his shoulder is trimmed down and ready for detail, and the arms are “almost” there- the left side needs to go lower. But it’s getting there.
March 16, 2024. Sure Doesn’t Look Like a Saint…
A week of work has passed so far, and it feels like I haven’t gotten very far, but I keep reminding myself it is a long process. I’ve traced the outline front and back and removed the stone that was outside of the tracing. Then I did it again from the other side. After probably 12 hours of work I’ve come to this.
It does call to mind the “stages of creativity” I had once read:
Stage 1. Oh that looks easy, I could totally do that!
Stage 2. Oh my, this is a lot harder than it looks…
Stage 3. Man, this is impossible! This looks awful! It sucks! I suck!
Stage 4. Hey, I think I can see it coming together a little…
Stage 5. Huh, this is looking pretty good, I think I can pull this off!
Stage 6. Wow, this looks great! Look what I did!
I am at stage 2… And look how neat and tidy the surrounding area is! I promise you, that is not the case.
March 9, 2024. But First, A Template
Before anything starts, gotta figure out what stone stays and what stone goes. Michelangelo supposedly said after being asked how he carved David, that David was in there and he just had to remove the stone to set him free. What a load of #$?!, sorry Michelangelo. He made measurements, models and countless other measurements- and still made the hands too big.
I started two templates, a forward and a profile, based upon the terra cotta model and blown up to a 3x scale along with a clay model of the head I proposed. A handsome model was hired to demonstrate the use of the template.
March 8, 2024. It starts at the start
With models of the face and of the body made (and the handy reference of a large anatomy book), the next step was to get a big block of limestone- 12” square x 36” high- home and into the shop. It’s just a mere 450 pounds- at least for now.
