Sculptor wins a top award for science fiction and fantasy artists

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

NWsource

Saturday, November 15, 2003

Sculptor wins a top award for science fiction and fantasy artists

By LAURA LICA
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Behind a small wooden house that blends neatly with its neighbors in White Center, in what was probably meant to be a garage, dragons are nesting.

Though huge and powerful, they depend 100 percent on the slim, nervous hands of one woman.


		Grant M. Haller / P-I
	Kim Graham paints the inside of her dragon sculpture with a rusty color so it will look like a fossil.

Amid the mounds of clay, steel armatures and fantastic ancient skeletons of mystic creatures, she sticks her head in the huge mouth of a dragon skull to carefully paint the inside with a rusty color that will make it look like a fossil.

Meet Kim Graham, sculptor of the fantastic and winner of one of the most prestigious awards for science fiction and fantasy artists.

Graham earned the honor after arriving at this year's Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists Convention with a mission: Sculpt a dragon in the lobby, out of 100 pounds of clay, in three days, in front of everybody.

She left with a Chesley award, one of the most coveted honors in the field.

The work was just for fun, as the Seattle-based artist had done before in so many other such events. Driving her car loaded with clay and steel, ready to build one of her favorite creatures, just to destroy it with her own hands at the end of the event. The sculptures, about 5 feet long, are usually too heavy to bring home.

Graham didn't even know much about the award she got in September for 3-D performing arts.

"I said 'Chesley who?' when I got it. But my friends were so impressed and they explained how prestigious it is and how hard to get."

Now Kim knows what the Chesleys are: the sci-fi equivalent of a Tony, voted on by members of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists.

It was just another surprise in a life's journey that is full of them. The daughter of a Montana lumberjack and a former housekeeper, Graham said she never expected to become a prize-winning dragon sculptor.

But she doesn't intend to stop.

She just recently finished a 5-foot-long skull of a dragon with omnivorous teeth.

Graham loves sculpting dragons because there are no rules.

"Dragons don't exist so no one can tell you you did this or that wrong. I can do whatever I want. I've made him omnivorous teeth so we'll have more diversion. Reptile teeth are boring," she says, grabbing the maxillar of the beast with a firm, yet gentle touch.

She needs to push a steel bar through the jaws to make the upper and lower half of the head stay together, and yet be able to open the mouth of the dragon.

Graham, now 41, only began sculpting six years ago.

She grew up in Montana, learning from her father to use "all tools ever known to man except the chain saw. I've seen too many people slashed to death by it."

For 12 years, Graham worked as a housekeeper. She says she enjoyed having a flexible schedule, the ability to choose her clients and, most of all, being able to pay for her husband's university education.

"I was working from 10 to 10, but money was pouring in," she said. "Six months after he graduated, we were debt free."

A year after her husband, Hank, began working as an engineer, he came to her and said, "Now it's your turn. I can support us; you decide what you want to do -- go to school, start doing anything you would like to do."

It took her several months to figure out what she wanted to do, but she knew she would like to work with her hands, she knew she liked reptiles and she knew she liked big things.

An image kept haunting her: The cover of "Dragonriders of Pern" by Anne McCaffrey. She had the book when she was a child, and the flying dragon stuck with her.

Once she decided to create her own dragons, she had no idea where to start.

"I asked about sculptors in the area, I went to see some of them, but no one knew how to teach me what I wanted to do," she said. "I had to learn all by myself. I read hundreds of books, I tried the materials on my own and failed several times until I succeeded."

First she had to figure out how to build a support system that wouldn't fall under the weight of the clay. Her sculptures broke dozens of times till she mastered her armature technique.

Learning about human anatomy was the next step. She said she couldn't draw but she had to learn: "I used comic books. I drew Conan the Barbarian thousands of times."

Then came the problem of surfacing the sculpture, finding the right finish.

But after she got them to look how she wanted, she stumbled into yet another obstacle. She didn't know how to reproduce them. And she said no one wanted to tell her, for fear of adding to their competition.

She knew there is a machine that molds the cast but she had no idea how to build one: "I used reverse engineering. That's like guessing how to make a toaster looking at a piece of toast, observing how it's burnt on both sizes, so that means it was done inside something hot, and there are two sides that are heated, therefore the burnt lines on both faces of the bread, and so on."

Her husband helped with the electrical side and the first prototypes worked. The next ones were even better. Her designs are exhibited at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma and several prototypes were given to friends, who still use them.

After three years of struggle, Graham finally believed she mastered the technique. Her first big project soon came up, a commission from Wizards of the Coast. The huge sculpture she created now decorates their corporate offices.

The sculpture, her biggest to date, was a Shivan Dragon, the "undisputed master of the mountains of Shiv." It is 14 feet high with a wingspan of 22 feet and it weighs approximately 500 pounds. She built it in five months with the help of five close friends, out of a huge mass of fiberglass and steel.

Then Graham spent three years sculpting dragons and other fantasy creatures for Wizards of the Coast.

Twisting her red plaid shirt above her elbows, Graham said she has started to offer sculpting classes in Seattle: "What took me three years to learn on my own, I can teach in three months."

Her goal as a teacher is to empower her students with the technique of sculpting, letting them find their way as artists after they get the basics:

"A student of mine told me once I don't allow space for self-expression. That's right. I don't. Master the technical part first, then there is time for self-expression. There's no self-expression about human anatomy."

Graham's wish for the future is to meet more sculptors and share ideas.

But for now, she says her life is more than she ever dreamed of, with a supporting husband at her side, a group of intimate friends and a passion to last a lifetime: "Life just doesn't get better than that."

Laura Lica, a reporter from Romania, is spending five months at the Post-Intelligencer on an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship. She can be reached at 206-448-8224 or lauralica@seattlepi.com.

Add P-I Visual Arts headlines to