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Ray Garcia
is a Native American from the San Felipe Pueblo, New Mexico. Ray is very prolific in many mediums, including pottery and wood & metal work.
His Tufa Silver Casting designs are inspired by Native American symbology. He favors the turtle, which symbolizes patience - an appropriate symbol to use in Tufa Casting. Due to the extremely fragile nature of the Tufa Casting Technique, it is rare to produce more than one piece from a cast.
Sometimes the cast will break before the silver is poured.
Ray is one of a very few artists in the world creating Tufa pieces and is the only one in this area.
Dream Gallery is honored to have the opportunity to represent such a special and uniquely talented artist.
Tufa Casting
Tufa is porous rock made of volcanic ash used to form a casting mold. The Tufa Stone is cut to the
desired size and shape which often resembles a brick. It is then sliced in half. Usually, a design is
carved into just one of the interior sides of the Tufa Stone. After the carving is done, the two halves
of the Tufa Stones are tightly joined. This is tied together with a strip of rubber. A sprue hole is
carved into one end. The joined and decorated halves then become the mold. Finally, molten
sterling silver is poured through the sprue hole into the mold. After the sterling silver cools and
hardens, the carved design is visible and the Tufa leaves a textured surface on the metal.
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