By Stefene Russell
Photograph by Adam Scott Williams
The art of lifecasting—creating sculptural molds from the human body—dates back to the Egyptian sarcophagus. Artist Philip Hitchcock is a master of it, and though his work is inspired by classic Greek and Roman sculpture, it’s as much Road Warrior as it is “Discus Thrower”: A fragmented torso that might otherwise pass as archaeological relic has, in place of an arm, an extension on pulleys, with a circular blade at the shoulder and a C-clamp where the hand should be; a male figure in a ram’s-skull helmet tensely crosses arms embedded with circuit boards; a warrior, shown only from the lower face down, wields a Lucite sword with a hilt decorated with beaver skulls.
“If I’m going to create something,” Hitchcock says, “I want it to be exceptional—a little bit larger than life, dignified, heroic.” Last fall, Hitchcock and his partner moved here from L.A., settling in a rehabbed South Side house. A St. Louis native who left home before even turning 18, Hitchcock graduated magna cum laude from UCLA, then went on to mount several solo art shows and make a name for himself as designer, receiving commissions from MGM, the World Wrestling Federation and the Fox television show The Swan.
So: why leave Hollywood in such a bright flush of success?
“In L.A., there’s a saying, ‘You’re only as good as your last project,’” he remarks, “but, for me, art is about that moment-to-moment process where you suddenly look up and think, ‘My God, where did the time go?’ I was beginning to feel extremely disconnected in Los Angeles. The city was no longer mirroring back to me who I was.”
Hitchcock’s brightly lit studio (“I turn on the lights and it’s like a prison movie,” he jokes) is neat as a pin, despite the messiness of the bodycasting process. He applies alginate—dental plaster—to a model’s body, then covers it with fortifying layers of cotton and plaster gauze. After carefully removing the mold, he fills it with gypsum, resin or fiberglass and, once that’s set, tears the mold off to reveal the casting, which is sanded, sculpted and coated with a series of washes.
“When people first see this process, they say, ‘Wow! Look at the detail!’” (Lifecastings often show such minutiae as fingerprints and pores.) “But after 20 years of doing this, I’m, like, ‘Oh, wow! Look at the detail,’” he deadpans. “Sometimes you just don’t want to see all that humanity.”
Hitchcock was a little nervous this might be the reaction to his first St. Louis show, NeoClassic, when it opened at the Coles Lamar Design & Gallery in January. His figures are mostly nudes, and his work can be straightforwardly erotic—and, yes, we’ll admit it: St. Louis can be prudish. But the exhibit opened to a packed house, was held over for a full month and even received mention on Mayor Francis Slay’s blog, where the mayor raved over the signature image, “The Creation of Adam,” based on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel mural.
“That piece is actually a composite of three different models done in eight sections,” Hitchcock explains, “but Adam’s face and the face of God are the same man. So it’s not at all like a Jell-O mold where you pour it in and pop it out.
“Although,” he adds dryly, “I think sometimes people think that.”
