In June, 1913, Calder returned to San Francisco to stay till the
Exposition was well started. On the grounds he established a huge
workshop. Then he began the practical developing of the designs, a great
mass, which had already been carefully sifted. Hitherto, in American
expositions the work had been done, for the most part, in New York, and
sent to its destination by freight, a method costly in itself and all
the more costly on account of the inevitable breakage. San Francisco,
by being so far from New York, would have been a particularly expensive
destination. From every point of view it seemed imperative that the work
should be done here.
In a few weeks that shop was a hive of industry, with sculptors,
students of sculpture front the art schools, pointers, and a multitude
of other white-clad workers bending all their energies toward the
completion on time of their colossal task. A few of the sculptors and
artisans Calder had brought from New York. But most of the workers he
secured in San Francisco, chiefly from the foreign population, some of
them able to speak little or no English.
The modeling of the replicas of well-known art works were, almost
without exception, made in clay. Most of the original work was directly
modelled in plaster-staff used so successfully throughout the
Exposition. For the enlarging of single pieces and groups the pointing
machine of Robert Paine was chosen by Calder. It was interesting to see
it at work, under the guidance of careful and patient operators, tracing
mechanically the outlines and reproducing them on a magnified scale. For
the finishing of the friezes the skill of the artist was needed, and
there Calder found able assistants in the two young sculptors, Roth and
Lentelli, who worked devotedly themselves and directed groups of
students.
In all the sculpture Calder strove to keep in mind the significance of
the Exposition and the spirit of the people who were celebrating. With
him styles of architecture and schools were a minor consideration, to
be left to the academicians and the critics. He believed that sculpture,
like all other art-forms, was chiefly valuable and interesting as human
expression.