Nic Bladen

 Nic Bladen (n.d.) is an artist that creates life-size sculpture castings of plants. His jewellery is a result of his lost casting experiments that lead him to his life-size sculptures. No two pieces are the same as he does not make moulds of his work, he casts from the natural object itself.

Nic Bladen's sculptures are very intricate and some of them are made without harming the plant itself. An example of this would be his Boscia Albitrunca (Bladen. 2015) sculpture, which is 3m x 4.2m x 1.6m, that was made by making a mould of the tree and casting a single cast from the mould. Only some of the branches were cast from live branches but it was ensured that these would not kill the tree.

I have seen many pages on Instagram selling castings that are made from cast plants like Burn out Castings, Silversmith nursery and Cactus and flora castings. They sell their castings for other jewellers to use and are based overseas, whereas Nic Bladen uses his castings to make sculptures and jewellery. He is also a South African artist which makes his work more relatable to me as some of the plants used in his work are indigenous to Soth Africa.

Bladen.N. (2015). Boscia Albitrunca. Bronze sculpture with steel base