I guess Weaning Glory could be called a Bovine Madonna. When I was completing the photo shoot for the Pyramide, her owner’s husband asked me if I could do a portrait of his beloved Beefmaster cow Glory who was so attached to each of her first two calves that she cleared a four rail fence getting back to the calves when they attempted to wean them. We then shot another couple of rolls of film to get Glory’s and her heifer’s markings.
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 One of the more difficult parts of creating Weaning Glory was designing the fence and base in such a way to support Glory and her heifer. I used dowels that I drilled and wired together and onto the hardware cloth base. The dowel was also wrapped with fine aluminum mesh.
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 Glory’s heifer shows a very early stage of creation with aluminum foil creating the mass for her body over the twisted aluminum wire skeleton. The leg wire is deliberately long to allow ends to be untwisted and pushed through the hardware cloth base. Glory shows the next two steps, covering the aluminum foil with fine aluminum mesh for the Polyform Sculpey to adhere better, and then adding a thin layer of the polymer clay. The base and fence are also covered with a thin layer.
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 Both Glory and the heifer are pretty well sculpted and positioned with their leg wires untwisted. The colored rolls of clay will be pushed into the hardware cloth with a small sculpture tool to create varied color in the grass.
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 The grass is completed and Two wires have been cinched around Glory’s middle to anchor her to the top rail of the fence. Her left foreleg is wired to the diagonal rail and her right positioned to further untwist wire to wrap around rail. The plain clay on the fence was covered with two colors of Sculpey III to create the wood effect.
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 Sculpting complete, the piece was baked in the oven in a pyrex pan.
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 All the parts of the baked piece that were done with colored Sculpey III were covered with aluminum foil to protect them from the acrylic paint used to match the actual markings of both animals
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 The finished Weaning Glory on the oak base that is part of the Clear Case display case made of aircraft grade plexiglass that is custom made for each one of a kind piece
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