MIDDLETOWN >> Just outside of Middletown a newly constructed wedding arch sits outside the entrance to what is currently a goat pen but will eventually become a garden. The arch is made of steel, Styrofoam and, most importantly, cement and weighs in at about 500 pounds. Large mushrooms of red, brown and orange adorn the pillars. A San Clemente Island goat head is carved into the top of the arch. An inscription reads, “Through this portal thou shall be wed / And if thy vows unduly fail / Pass beneath this arch to break the spell.”
This is the work of sculptor Christalene Loren, who began her professional artistic adventures making jewelry in 1971. She sold her pieces at Renaissance fairs for 19 years, but decided that working on such a small scale wasn’t satisfying enough. “Doing jewelry broke me into the 3-D space on a small scale and then I just kept going larger,” Loren said. “I just kind of liked that whole 3-D thing in the sense that you can walk around it. I did large paintings for a time but I always felt frustrated that it was flat.”
After jewelry came a try aat bronze casting. The expensive material was a hindrance, however, especially when Loren wanted to go larger. She then found surface bonding cement, which she says was originally invented to resurface pools in the Midwest. The material doesn’t crack so she decided it was the perfect thing for her needs. The cement could also be given color by mixing minerals directly into the substance as it’s applied to the sculpture. “All the color in there is not painted, it’s actually mixed into the cement,” Loren explained.
The wedding arch began as an idea five years ago and was only just completed on Dec. 24. The project began as less of an inspired piece and more of a basic concept. “It started out with an arch,” Loren said. “What was I going to do to make this a theme? It was mainly working on the engineering of it. Can I engineer this thing? What was I going to put on the pillars and what was I going to put on the arch? And it all just came together.”
This is typical of much of Loren’s artwork. She works in terms of problem solving, figuring out the mechanics of a piece until eventually a sculpture emerges. “I think a lot of it is a concept,” she explained. “I’ll start with an idea and then how can I express that idea in a physical way. And then that becomes the challenge. I might have a moment or two of inspiration but a lot of it is just working it out and engineering it.”
Loren’s surroundings inspire concepts for her artwork. “I live on a small ranch out in the middle of nowhere and there’s a lot of natural forms and events that can trigger ideas,” she said. She also raises San Clemente goats on her property, which explains the goat head carved into the arch. “I use a lot of natural forms and mythological forms,” she said.
Loren knew she could construct the arch, but it was a more involved and detailed project than she had created before. “I built an armature out of steel pipes, then I laminated Styrofoam around the pipes so I had a surface to work on,” she explained. She traced her drawings onto the Styrofoam then carved away to about a half an inch so that the cement could be applied over the top. “The carving was just a guide so I knew where things were. I wasn’t just working blind,” she explained. “It was solving one problem after the other after the other, which is kinda what I like doing.”
Next came the texture work that took up a lot more of her time than usual. “All the little gills of the mushrooms had to be built in cement and all the caps of the mushrooms were different colors. It was a lot of work just in terms of the detail,” she said. Her next project involves cementing a papier mache dragon’s head, which promises to move a lot quicker than the impressive but time consuming wedding arch. She said that the scales of the dragon will be the most detailed work on that piece and they’re nothing compared to the arch. In addition to the texture of the mushroom, chunks of mirror and white porcelain chips had to be individually pressed into the caps. Loren will be thrilled if she never sees another mushroom again for as long as she lives, she joked.
“The biggest issue was how was I going to put the cement on the underside of the arch,” Loren said. “That was the thing that was taking the most time.” She wasn’t planning on laying face up eight feet in the air while she applied cement right above her face, so she had to think of another plan. She eventually came up with a way to work on the top of the arch in her studio, and attach it to the pillars once it was finished. The top was installed in November of 2013 above the two pillars, which were still incomplete. In the last year she’s been able to go to work on the remaining parts. “This summer I began blending everything together and carving the pillars and cementing everything,” she said.
Winter chills are another factor that hindered Loren’s progress, a downside to working on something as large as a sculpture. “The weather was turning and I didn’t want to be out there in the cold,” she explained. “You’re working wet, you’ve got the hose, you’re mixing cement, it’s just very wet [Summer] was still hot but it was better than being there all bundled up and wet.”
While it may seem strange that Loren would build a wedding arch on her private property, she does have a goal for the future. “The whole idea of the arch is that someday it’s going to be a place where people can get married,” she said, explaining that one day her property will be an arts center. She plans on constructing more pieces around her land. “It’s a long term project That’s why I built a wedding arch out in the middle of nowhere. There was a plan.”
Sculptures aren’t Loren’s only interest, and she made a living as an art director, where she learned the art of paper mache, before moving to Lake County from Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. Now, with art directing behind her, she works on her sculptures, draws and is trying her hand at the written word with a book about goats. Loren can be found happily tending to her San Clemente Island goats when she’s not working on her art.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
