Olexandr Kovalchuk

Oleksandr is a master of decorative soldering of sculptures from sheet copper. This technique is one of the most ancient ones. The potential of this material is inexhaustible. Sheet copper is valuable due to its unique characteristics of flexibility and plasticity that allow for vivid disclosure of images and the sculpture characters. Soldering of sheet copper prompts incredible combinations and joining of different materials. That is why each sculpture is individual and unique in its image style and production technique.

Creative work

Olexandr Kovalchuk works mostly with sheet copper and metal alloys on its basis. They are sheet bronze, brass, and nickel silver. The technique employed by the artist for creation of his works combines a lot of ways of metal processing: embossing, beating out, forging, chemical processing etc. All the details are joined by means of soldering by hard solders.

The technique of work with sheet copper requires a special approach and a large number of special tools which Olexandr manufactures himself. Although work with copper is very special and laborious, it correspondently is of more individual character, because in accordance with the master it requires not only sculptor skills but a set of knowledge and practices. A person in this should be a chemist, a sculptor, a metalworker, a smith – all in one.

Making embossing on sheet copper has been known from the ancient times and it is connected with the customs of the East and the ancient world where people used to make decorative tablewear and to decorate walls by ornamented copper sheets. So the technique of manufacturing volumetric sculptures was well known back in the ancient times. There is an assumption that its golden age came during the period of VIII-VII BC but after casting technique introduction embossing almost disappeared…