I've been a portrait sculptor for about a year and
 everytime I see a good life cast I wonder if what I'm doing is
 just redundant. George Segal and others have been declared great
 artists doing life casts while most true sculptors aren't
 accorded a great deal of respect in the "high" art world. Now
 with 3-d scanners and prototyping machines it is possible to
 create a portrait bust or full figure sculpture in a couple of
 hours with machinery. I would like to begin a discussion on the
 role of tradional figurative sculpture given these other
 mechanical methods. Please reply. 
Thank you, 
Sam Heller, Chicago

 Sam-
 As a serious lifecaster, I'm glad to discuss this. I came to working in this
 artform by way of photography, although I can sculpt the regular way. I believe
 Segal arrived via a completely different route. He wanted these abstracted Golem
 figures and lifecasting is a legitimate way to generate them, and quicker than
 all that damned chickenwire. Do his pieces move you? Don't fret how they were
 made.
 I don't think or work like Segal or Hanson did.
 I get ideas, sketch them, find models, pose and cast them, cast them again,
 repair and refine the better mold, cast it, break the mold away, repair the
 casting, refine it, finish it, figure how to mount it, photograph it, post it on
 my website, enter shows, all the regular stuff.
 Just as photography uses what is real, so does lifecasting. Just as photography
 is a mechanical technique which may be employed by artists with vision, so may
 lifecasting. I would not let someone say that the worst freehand sculpture is
 preferable to the best lifecast -- how bigoted. Still, lifecasters usually get
 less acceptance and recognition than regular sculptors. People will pay well for
 good sculpted busts whether of children or corporate bigwigs.
 With a good lifecasting, you produce a certain pleasant shock --a frisson, I
 think the French say-- and I like that.
 The business of scanning and reproducing a 360 degree figure as far as I read
 about it is tremendously costly and laborious now. My lifecasting technique
 comes from the 'arte povera' tradition, there's little cash outlay. Some l'casters
 do drop a fortune on quick silicones and bronze foundries.
 If you come to believe that a lifecast portrait bust produces what you intended,
 then go try it. If you decide that a good sculpted bust brings other qualities
 to the work that casting cannot match, which I'd agree with, keep on sculpting.
 I'll never cast open eyes, and it's tough removing acne scars and crow's feet.
 My process is more about the unvarnished truth.
 Please look at my site and follow some links to other lifecaster's sites and
 you'll see lots of visions of how lifecasting should be pursued.
 --
 Dan  <archicast@earthlink.net>
 http://www.archicast.com/lifecast-index1.html