Chrome Hot Dog

A meditation on excess, rendered in mirror-polished metal.

Modeled after the exaggerated gesture of a condiment squeeze, frozen mid-motion.

Drawn on paper, then rebuilt digitally until the scale is settled. A resin master is printed from that file, and a silicone mould taken from the master yields one wax for each of the thirty-three examples.

The condiment is the problem. A ribbon caught mid-air is thin, undercut, and impossible to draw from a mould in a single direction, so it is cast apart from the body and joined afterwards. Both are poured in stainless steel by lost wax, in ceramic shell, at a foundry that still finishes by hand. The join is chased until the seam is not there.

The casting returns to the studio raw, and the finish is the artist's own work. Abrasives run from eighty grit to two thousand, and only after that does polishing become a decision rather than a task: some planes are taken to mirror, others held at satin, chosen example by example. The object gives back a reflection where the artist allows it to.

The enamel is last — seven coats of urethane, airbrushed, each one sanded by hand before the next. No example leaves the bench in under sixty hours.