Dexter Benedict is the owner and operator of Fire Works Foundry in Penn Yan, New York. Dexter has been working in bronze ever since the 1970’s, when he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a Masters of Fine Arts in Sculpture. When Dexter moved to New York, he built the Fire Works Foundry and Sculpture Studio to produce and cast his own sculptures. Currently, he produces works ranging from small pedestal pieces to monumental figures in bronze.
Dexter uses the Lost-wax process to create his bronze sculptures. The Lost-wax process is the process by which a bronze sculpture is created from a negative of an original model. Unlike other sculptors, Dexter performs the entire sculpture-making process himself, starting from a clay model, and ending up in a finished work.
In the image on the top of the page, Dexter pours molten bronze from a crucible into a plaster mold. Over several hours, the bronze will cool. It will take on the shape of its mold, becoming part of a finished sculpture.