Want to record your posterior for posterity? Or get a likeness of your breasts before gravity takes over? You can have these and other body parts cast in bronze at SculptYours, in Woodland Hills, Calif.
For two years, sculptor Mark Maitre has been turning faces, chests, buttocks, hands, feet and pregnant torsos into three-dimensional works of art mounted on marble. Clients range from celebrities to producers, models, bodybuilders and accountants willing to shell out $1,500-$4,000 for these bronze beauties. Many are commissioned as gifts. Requests to cast more private parts are politely declined.
Actress Marlee Matlin had her breasts cast as a gift to her husband. An unnamed notable turned the small of his back and buttocks into a fruit bowl (in a nod to tastefulness, the fruit rests on the back).
“We had one lady who wanted to send her breasts to her husband when he left her,” says Tara Kolla, a partner in the venture. “It’s a statement about oneself. It says `I want to stay on this Earth after I’m gone in some form or another.’ “
Maitre uses casting techniques for creating aliens and the like in his full-time job as a special effects artist. Kolla persuaded him to turn his talents to bronze after reading about the popularity of a similar sculpting business in London.
During an initial meeting with a client, Maitre and Kolla determine the client’s objective (gift? gag?) and discuss the final finish. The client returns for the casting, requiring the removal of all body hair from the selected area, coating it in Vaseline and then covering it in layers of bandages dipped in plaster. From the plaster relief, Maitre makes a “positive” cast, then smooths out imperfections, accentuates contours and balances the sculpture. Maitre will even shave a few inches off the hips or remove a stretch mark at the client’s request. The piece is then sent to a foundry for final casting. The process takes two months.
The three-dimensional result puts the most familiar forms in a different light. “When you see your own figure in bronze, it doesn’t look like you,” says Maitre. “It looks like a piece of art.”
For further information on SculptYours, call 213-896-9447.
