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SUNDAY, NOV. 2, 1986
SCULPTOR
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American Artists and whose landscapes still decorate many of New Orleans? finer buildings ^?ua^|te^d he grew up in an environment of fine paintings and antiques. He also spent a lot of time at New Orleans? Delgado Museum, about four blocks from his grandmother?s house.
But he went there to play, because ?it was a spooky old place,? not to look at the art, he said.
He never took an art class, although he tried his hand at painting several times when he was young. But he was never satisfied with his results in that medium.
He credits his initial interest in sculpting to the arrival in Waveland of a colony of five or six New Orleans artists. That was in the early 1970s.
?It was like a hub of them moved from New Orleans. Cheap rent or something, I guess. I met them, and one worked in sheet metal copper, another made fountains. Another did direct weld, and he did mainly water fowl and wildlife. When he did a duck, when it was finished it looked like a duck. Unless you would go up and thump it, you would think there were feathers.?; _
Guenard was so intrigued, he said, that he began to watch the artists work and ask them questions.
Then he bought a cheap set of carving tools, some files, sandpaper and a can of Bondo, a polymer resin used in auto repair to smooth out dents. The Bondo was his first sculpting medium which he applied over crushed newspaper wrapped with tape.
?When it?s in its soft stage, it?s a mess to work with. But after it sets up, it carves easy. After half an hour, you have to start using chisels and files.?
He had no idea what he was going to produce, Guenard said. The finished product turned out to be a head of his Afghan hound Zamira, but only because she kept bothering him while he. was getting acquainted with the
process, he said.	7	i
Guenard worked on the head at home in his kitchen, and behind the ' counter at the skating rink.
?I would do a nose or an eye and it wouldn?t look right so I would grind it j off. I actually got calipers and did a detailed head study of the Afghan.? Nine months later, in February, 1984, Guenard finished Zamira. He had discovered the joy of sculpting.
?It sort of found me and hooked me, and I?ve never been the same since.?	j
Guenard still has the Bondo Zamira, and a bronze of the same work.
Because working in bronze is a ?very, very expensive proposition,? Guenard went to a foundry in New Orleans and learned how to make the molds himself.
He also learned he could work directly with wax.
Guenard?s second piece was a figure which he calls The Monk for lack of a better name. His third piece, an abstract named Eternal Love, was started about the time he met his wife Terry, who works for the Hancock County Board of Supervisors.
Those two pieces were then cast in bronze, using the lost wax process, a technique that has been practiced for more than 4,000 years. The process involves constructing a model in wax and forming a mold over the outside. The wax is then drilled or ?lost? when . the mold is heated and the was melts j leaving a hollow space inside the j mold. Molten metal then is poured into the void. After cooling, the mold is removed and the artist completes the piece with hand tools, knocking j off excess metal, filing the piece down and adding a patina.
In 1975, Guenard sold his first piece, The Hand of Christ, to an artist friend who also financed the casting of some of Guenard?s work.
?I felt great, but I also felt he might be doing it just because he was trying to help me out,? Guenard said.
Subsequent sculptures included mermaids, more heads, other figures and, after Guenard had a friend teach him how to weld, fountains. Guenard sculpted 90 some fountains until he