‘Sr Greta’s Service’
Photograph of Greta Towner following her graduation as a nurse in Rockhampton in 1914
‘Sr Greta’s Service’ (Working Title)
Sculpture commission for life size bronze sculpture for Memorial Park Blackall QLD
In late 2022 I was so pleased to be awarded the commission to produce a life size bronze sculpture of Sr Greta Norman Towner, a WWI Nurse, born in Blackall at Glencoe Station in 1891. This commission from the RSL Blackall Sub-branch has to be completed by 10 November 2023 in time for Remembrance Day celebrations the next day. There is a lot of work to do and this blog is to help those interested in Sr Greta and the commission of the sculpture to follow the progress of the work.
There are too few sculptures of significant women in Australia!
This is one of the primary driving forces of the project and so worthwhile. We can blame history, but we can also make amends and honour great Australian women and men, equally. So this project is a great case in point. Greta and her brother Edgar were both born in Blackall and both enlisted to serve in WWI, Edgar in the Australian Army and Greta in the Australian Army Nursing Service. Edgar, who to this day remains Queensland’s most decorated soldier, is already remembered with a sculpture in Memorial Park Blackall. The proposal is to site a life size bronze of Sr Greta in the park on the opposite side of the main entry path. To me this is very appropriate. She too served!
Much great work has already been done on Sr Greta’s life story by the students of Blackall State School and coordinated by Avril Fazel. You can read some of this work here: https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/discovering-sister-greta-norman-towner-through-historical-enquiry
In this blog I propose to concentrate on the process of the sculpture itself. We’ll first produce a quarter scale maquette or model of the proposed finish sculpture for approval and community review and comment. The maquette is complete in clay now and I will be bringing a cast of it in cold cast bronze to Blackall and presenting it at the end of January 2023. I won’t spoil the surprise yet with any pics so you’ll have to wait!
The process from clay to bronze
Sculpture is all about process. Many people today have no idea how bronze sculpture is produced, so I have previously blogged about it here: From Clay to Bronze. That blog explains it in simple terms. Here I’ll illustrate the process as we go.
Step 1 - The Maquette
The process of historical sculpture really begins with research. I need to know when she lived as body shapes change over time and I need to understand Sr Greta’s physique and character and where possible some of her significant experiences. Finding the right gesture for the work is fundamental to me in my work. As humans so much of who we are is clearly expressed in the posture, attitude and expression of the body and not just the face. I will explain my decisions about this for the work when it is presented.
The maquette for Sr Greta will be just over 45cm high at quarter scale. I am reliably informed that Sr Greta was a tall woman standing at least 5 feet 11 inches so the final sculpt will be this tall in the clay. The maquette begins with an armature, and for a smaller work this size I’ve elected to use aluminium wire 5mm in diameter. The core armature is assembled using accurate measurements taken from a live model who was the same height as Sr Greta.
The photograph below shows how the physical work of the maquette began - with an aluminium wire armature.
