Later this month, a bronze statue of Al Waxman will be installed in Bellevue Park, just off Kensington Market. Apt, since Al was and always will be King of Kensington.
The statue is life-size and portrays Al standing at the nexus of two park benches with a sudden smile on his face, as if he were about to speak to someone he'd just recognized across the way.
Ruth Abernethy is the sculptor. She's the one who put Glenn Gould on the bench in front of the CBC. Which gives her a rare double -- our most talented recluse, and our most popular actor.
I met Ruth at Artcast foundry in Georgetown the other day. Bronze ingots were melting in a crucible. I was curious to know why she chose to portray the figure of the older Waxman -- after all, I and many others think of him as the King in his baseball jacket, popping peanuts into his mouth, walking down the street, smiling at everyone.
Her answer disarmed me.
"It wouldn't do him justice to freeze-frame him as the King of Kensington. I wanted to salute the body of his work. He had a full career." And a full life. Actor, father, husband, friend. He never left Toronto. He was one of us. He'll always be one of us now.
Ruth told me how she made the sculpture: She got his wardrobe measurements, the ones taken when Al was preparing to play the role of Willie Loman. She made a paper map of his figure, cut a rough outline into a block of styrofoam, covered it with wax, and then did the fine modelling.
She sculpted the head separately, working from photos. She had a picture of Al sitting in a pachinko parlour with a little smile on his face; the photo was taken when he was visiting his son in Japan.
It is the perfect smile.
As she neared completion, Ruth called Al's wife and asked her if she'd like to come and take a look. Sara Waxman says she saw the figure and gasped. "It sucked the air right out of me. I couldn't breathe."
Sara also said it looked too much like Al after his illness, so Ruth beefed him up a bit. When she was finally done, she took the model to the foundry where it was cut into a lot of little pieces -- hands, arms, legs, barrel chest and broad back.
The workers make wax duplicates of each piece; the duplicates are coated with a ceramic slurry, are dried and then heated to remove the wax. What remains are hollow shells that must be hardened so they won't crack when filled with molten bronze.
Al Waxman, and the Lost Wax Process.
They poured his hands first.
Bronze is an alloy -- a lot of copper, a little tin, some silica and manganese. It is not melted over fire, it is heated with a steady application of electromagnetism. It's a bit like using a microwave -- the molecules get excited. Bronze is ready to pour at 2,100 F. That's fairly exciting. At that temperature, it glows like hot orange juice.
And I was drawn to the crucible the way I am drawn to a cliff's edge. I wanted to touch it with the tip of my finger, the way you touch a hot iron. Hsst! Had I done so, I'd certainly have excited my own personal molecules; had I done so, the tip of my finger would have become the tip of Al's.
Foundry workers Marcus Knoespel and Dave Chadwick wore protective aprons, gloves, sleeves and gaiters on their boots -- asbestos, in the old days; Kevlar, now. Their headgear looked like beekeepers hats. They hoisted the crucible and tipped it into the moulds the way you'd tip a five-gallon bucket of hot honey into a little jar; very, very carefully. They didn't spill a drop.
As their hands and Al's cooled, Dave said: "We were allowed to sign our names to this piece. It's the first time anyone's ever done that for us. I just saw the King of Kensington on TV a while ago. It was one of my favourite shows." Marcus said, "I saw Al Waxman in Death of a Salesman. It was an honour to do this piece. King of Kensington was part of my growing up." Part of mine, too.
I'll let you in on something.
Ruth Abernethy may have sculpted the older Al Waxman but I can't stop thinking of the King of Kensington in retirement -- he's come back to the old neighbourhood, he wants to shoot the breeze.