Raymond Wiger works with wire mesh as a sculpting material. No models or photographs are referred to, Raymond relies on his experience with anatomical studies. All work is done by hand.
Wiger first started working in wire mesh as a sculpting material in the late 1980s. Beginning with screen left over from repairing a window in a cabin in a national park, after six months discovered a more workable material with the same properties while sitting in front of a fireplace screen in Seattle, Washington. He uses no models or photographs from which to work, but relies for reference on a background of anatomical studies at the anthropology and art departments of the Smithsonian. Since the 1980s, Wiger has exhibited his work in galleries throughout the Americas and Europe, and his sculptures can be found in private collections around the world.
Wiger describes his sculpting process as follows: “sculpting in wire mesh equally involves the use of the right and left halves of the brain; the creative and the analytical. Beginning with a square, rectangular, triangular or other polygonal piece of mesh, the transformation to figure occurs without the use of any tools but the hands; in essence, skin against skin” As important, the integrity of the initial geometric shape is never compromised by the removal of “excess” material. To do so would be to reduce a rather complex process to merely one of just cutting out paper dolls. The final piece must include all the original material intact.