Daniel Dibble's sculpture career is Away Sailing, which is also the name of this piece. Photo / Bronwyn Zimmerman
Daniel Dibble's sculpture career is Away Sailing, which is also the name of this piece. Photo / Bronwyn Zimmerman
The seagull is in full flight, but one wing is attached to a circle. It is grounded but also exploring, grown up but also rooted in its surroundings.
Away Sailing is the first bronze cast sculpture Daniel Dibble made that he felt he could sell.
It could also be a metaphor for how he feels mounting his first exhibition.
As the son of renowned sculptor Paul Dibble, a leading artist of his generation, and painter, sculptor, and art critic Fran Dibble, he is understandably nervous about stepping into the spotlight. He doesn't even have an online presence, preferring to engage with people around him, not a computer screen.
On the plus side, he does have easy access to the Dibble foundry in Palmerston North. He started working at the foundry when he was 8 and it was in the family's backyard.
He lives in Feilding with partner Frances Campbell and tries to spend two days a week at the foundry.
Three days a week the 39-year-old works as a metrologist, travelling around the country testing scales.
Dibble went to Freyberg High School until his parents decided he was being a "bit naughty" and sent him to Rathkeale College in Masterton.
He lived in Wellington for about 10 years and worked in the house renovation industry but got sick of jumping around construction sites so studied metrology - the science of measurement.
Asked what his artistic inspiration is, Dibble replies his last sculpture as he tries to build and discover what can be done with materials - for him it is more exploration than inspiration. Sculpture is not as aesthetically developed as painting or printmaking.
Daniel Dibble with his partner Frances Campbell and parents Paul and Fran Dibble. Photo / Bronwyn Zimmerman
Paul is enthusiastic and supportive of Daniel's sculptures. Sometimes he will think he has a good idea but then find out Paul's already done it - native birds are off his list.
Dibble has learned from Paul the need to streamline the bronze casting process but is also attempting to pioneer different processes from his father, discovering what works and what doesn't.
Zimmerman Art Gallery director Bronwyn Zimmerman says bronze casting is a technical and intellectual challenge. It is hot, heavy, dangerous work and is not just the artwork you see but all those that don't make it.
Despite the heaviness of bronze, Dibble has captured weightlessness, vibrancy, and movement, she says.
Some of the pieces have 24-carat gold gilding done by Campbell.
Dibble says he never thought he would take up sculpture because when someone of such statute as his father has done it before you how are you going to live up to that or better it? He acknowledges he has put himself under a lot of pressure, cast himself under a large shadow, but decided he would rise to the challenge.
He is happy with his first exhibition but says he can still push the medium. The 10 pieces represent a year's work.
Unlike what some people think, bronze casting does not involve chiselling a bronze ingot.
Here is a description of the steps: create a wax mould of your image cover the wax in ceramic let ceramic harden, then melt out the wax pour in molten bronze use a sledgehammer to take off the ceramic shell sand and file to remove the sharp edges weld any pieces together apply a patina wax the sculpture to seal in the colours.
Dibbles & Son is at Zimmerman Art Gallery until October 2.
This is a Public Interest Journalism funded role through NZ On Air
