If I suddenly woke up in the living room of painter and sculptor Cinthia Joyce, the first words out of my mouth would be: In which museum did I pass out last night? That’s because the Manhattan Beach resident is mightily prolific and mightily talented, with skills and discipline that make the rest of us lower our heads in shame. A few months back, Joyce hosted a benefit art show in her home. One of her guests brought a friend, the latter having a nephew in Lincoln, Nebraska, who was in the process of building a home. The nephew, who from now on we will referred to as Client X, is a fan of Ann Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and wanted a statue of Atlas for the courtyard behind the house. The friend told Client X about Cinthia Joyce and eventually he flew out to L.A., met the artist, liked her work, liked her, and commissioned a statue.

Since our first conversation, a few details have changed. Atlas was originally to have the backyard to himself, with balconies stretched around the house so that people, in particular Client X’s four daughters, could gaze down upon him, to make sure he didn’t roam. As of this writing, however, Atlas will be out front where there’s a circular driveway. This way, at least, he can hold up the heavens (as opposed to holding up the liquor store) while watching cars and trucks go by.

Although still plenty larger than any garden gnome, Atlas has been reduced in size by a few inches. That’s because, as a titan cast in bronze, time is money and so is height, breadth, and weight. Still, bending down with the world on his shoulders, he’ll stand some five and a half or six feet.

Joyce points out that the ball, or globe, represents the universe, which then exposes a conundrum of sorts: If he’s holding up the universe then what’s he standing on? “As an artist,” Joyce says, “you think of all these different things.” She’d have liked to have sculpted him as if he was flying, even with that ungainly backpack, “except it wouldn’t be very safe. I have to think about engineering. I have to think about all those pounds falling on somebody at his party, so it has to have ways of attaching really solidly,” meaning into the pedestal. “So, there’s compromising that artists are always having to make, and one of them’s clothes.”

Joyce laughs, and it’s a subject we’re coming back to. This time, a steel trap

“I don’t like doing sketches,” Joyce says, “because it’s not really the truth of what you’re going to see. I change my mind a lot as I’m working to make it better, and I don’t want to stay within what looks good in the sketch.” She ponders her own words. “If it looks good in the sketch it won’t look good in a sculpture, because in a sculpture you always want something missing so that you’re inviting them (the viewer) to walk around.”

A sculpture, of course, is three-dimensional, and one can study it from a multitude of angles, but it doesn’t work that way with pencil lines on a flat sheet of paper. “So I always try to explain to them,” Joyce continues, “that I’d rather put the time in and show them what they’re really going to get, instead of something that looks good in a two-dimensional drawing.” The sketch, in short, is a lie. “If you make it look right then it isn’t right, because then your sculpture won’t look right.”

An escapee from Cirque du Soleil?

The model, as these pictures show, is no Oliver Hardy. In fact, he’s been an acrobat who’s traveled the world and performed for Cirque du Soleil. When he’s working, he’s practicing for eight hours a day, and apparently has enough upper body strength to hold up his female partner with one arm – granted, she’s no Oliver Hardy, either.

He’s 35 years old and has been on hiatus from the circus while reevaluating his career. Cinthia Joyce met him when she was taking a figure drawing class and he was the person everyone sketched. Because the Client X didn’t want his Atlas to be muscular and bulky, rather just muscular, Joyce approached the acrobat and asked if he’d be interested in posing for a sculpture. Easy money? Maybe. Maybe not. The required stance – stooping, and yet with arms raised up and over one’s back – is difficult to maintain, and apparently, in this case, it’s a pose that can’t comfortably be held for much over a minute. “Normally it’s a 20 minute session when you have a model,” Joyce says, “but they’re just sitting there, doing nothing.” Here it’s different. “He’s working every single muscle in his body. There’s no muscle I can give him a break on, unless I just say ‘Sit there while I do your foot.’” He’s been good-natured about it, Joyce continues, and he claims that it’s keeping him in shape for Cirque du Soleil.

Perhaps it seems that, from day one, he’s been posing with the globe in place, and a bronze one to boot. No, that’s not been the case. But what about the globe itself? How large will it be?

On the maquette it looks substantial, with a volatile, nebulous texture that contrasts with the relatively smooth body of Atlas. However, cost is again a key factor, and it could have wound up being as expensive to cast as the figure itself. I thought, if money gets tight we’ll see him holding up a golf ball.

But even this concept has been modified, and now Atlas will be bearing a globe that is comprised of three intersecting rings, still roughly textured, but in some ways now befitting a gymnast and acrobat. It goes without saying that, opened up this way, the globe will be lighter, the sculpture as a whole will be lighter, and this means that the pocketbook can stay heavier since it now won’t be depleted. Lastly, at its new weight, the client can feasibly transport Atlas in the back of his truck to a new set of constellations in Nebraska.

“If I didn’t have a model that was this muscular,” Joyce continues, “I would just make him more muscular.”

She explains: “When you know enough about anatomy you can just pad it whatever way you want to. I have done that before, and my models feel very good about themselves.” She laughs, and adds a few words about making them all into superheroes.

“All you need is to make sure that the balance is right and the structure is right, and then everything else is really up to you as an artist. But,” she adds, referring to her Cirque du Soleil model, “it’s just a thrill to see somebody who actually looks like a superhero in person. I keep telling him, ‘Oh, I just wish you could see how great you look from behind! You should see your deltoid! Sorry you’re the only one who’ll never get to see it, but that’s the way it is, I just have to tell you!” And she laughs again.

What about those trousers?

Anyone who’s busy 24/7 holding up the firmament is probably not thinking about clothes, but this Atlas by Cinthia Joyce will be wearing a breechcloth. Client X, remember, has four little daughters, and even though they’ll find human Atlases of their own one day, in the meantime…

“A lot of shows don’t like nudes,” Joyce says, “so I’ll probably put clothes on it anyway [for any copy or copies she keeps for herself], but artists always like nudes. We just think that after we went to all that trouble we want to keep it that way. In my opinion it’s a much more solid and believable sculpture if you sculpt it nude first, because then it doesn’t look like a disembodied spirit; you actually have the body really under there and you can feel it.

“And so, when I sculpt it, instead of just putting a chunk of clay on, you’ll feel that all of these things are moving. It’ll be sort of like a nude but it won’t be a nude. That’s how I get my figures to look like they’re really occupying space in a natural way.

“So, it’s a little extra trouble; more trouble for the model. But, if they have clothes on, every time they sit down all the folds [shift position]. It drives you crazy. I was doing a Madonna and Child and I had my neighbor come over and pose. Every 15 minutes, every single thing I did was wrong.” Maybe that’s when the local manikin gets a call, since he or she can hold a pose, and even a difficult one, for a long time. Go ahead and touch In the case of this Atlas and other such sculptures, a mold is created and filled with melted wax, but before the work is cast in bronze the sculptor cleans the wax with heated tools to rid it of mold marks or bubbles and any other distortion that can occur when the figure is pulled from the mold. “I’ll go over the whole thing really carefully,” Joyce says, “and maybe even with a flashlight or candlelight at night, to make sure I like the texture all the way around.”

In the catalogue for “Sargent and Italy,” an exhibition at LACMA some years ago, it was pointed out that Tintoretto collected sculpture casts or small models, which he would study and draw by the light of an oil lamp in order to capture the strong shadows.

The conversation moves to the idea of taking in a sculpture exhibition at night, or in the dark, with each person given a candle or a flashlight. I remark that, with this kind of illumination, the forms would take on an alluring insubstantiality.

Joyce agrees. “Like dappled sunlight kind of eating into the surface. You would explore it totally differently, especially on a sculpture. I love that idea. Maybe one day I’ll have a night show and do that. And I’d let them touch them, too. I like people to touch my work.” After all, she adds, “it’s the only time you get to touch a sculpture.”

Indeed, sculpture seems to be a tactile medium, and who hasn’t wanted to run their hands over a Bernini or a Rodin? Museums don’t want us to because, over time, the oils from our hands will darken the patina. Not that this would happen overnight.

“You can have a patina redone,” Joyce says. “I mean, when you’re making it, the whole time you’re touching it and you’re just feeling it and feeling, and that’s part of the wonderful experience of it. I really think that everyone should be allowed to touch them.”

It’s somewhat educating to watch her hands as Cinthia Joyce runs her fingers over the model of Atlas, still trying to get every muscle, every fiber just right. What is shown here was the early stage of the endeavor. And so, the maquette edging towards completion and the full-scale model about to be attempted, let’s pause with these famous words:

To be continued… B

Or, at least that's the way it seemed to me as I tried to parse this energy field, this mother of two fully-grown and highly successful children and wife of a physician who - she said - finds her inability to sit still fun.

Here's how she tells the story: "According to my mother, when I was 3 I laid down on a piece of fabric, drew a line around myself and cut out my first dress. I sewed it by hand and wore it to the grocery store."

As she spoke, her right hand flew wildly around her body to re-create that tracing and I could picture the dress hanging on her like a wild, fabric aura.

And those are the words that more or less sum up the action here in the Manhattan Beach home where she paints, sculpts and produces bronzes of monumental proportions, such as the Pacific gray whale that graces the Point Vicente Interpretive Center.

Then there are the much smaller pieces, like the in-progress Atlas. When I called to set up the interview, she put me off a day because "Atlas," gymnast Arthur Davis, had limited time to stand in her garage studio making like a mythological character while she rendered him in clay.

Clay that would then be transformed into bronze, a process far more complex, dangerous and expensive than I imagined.

The sculpting, as she tells it, began with a clay elephant fashioned in kindergarten and an immediate realization that this was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

Luckily, she had talent to work this long-range plan and teachers who encouraged her in mid-1950s Malibu, which is not the Malibu of movie stars. In fact, she and her five siblings were raised on a Santa Monica homicide cop's salary.

"We were Malibu hicks," she explains, broad smile in place. "In 1955, there were maybe nine house in Point Dume. It was all sage brush and we had nothing to do. So, if we wanted something, we made it ourselves. We made clothes and knocked out walls for remodeling and held country fairs in our backyard. It was while doing that I realized that squishing things around made art."

Later, while raising her children and taking classes at the Palos Verdes Art Center, she started squishing clay into dolls and marionettes. She carved wood and made elaborate costumes. And it was all guided by a much-earlier decision to study art history rather than art at UCLA.

"I followed my heart and that was the best thing that I ever did," said this outgoing and frank woman who was commissioned by the Daily Breeze some years ago to fashion its bronze Making A Difference Awards, which - along with the Dee Hardison Award medals - will be handed out (by me, though I didn't know it at the time of the interview) Saturday evening at the James Armstrong Theatre.

College, she said, taught her how to see.

"I look at good art all the time and when I travel I will spend 10 hours in a museum. That's why I travel alone. I'll spend hours examining bronzes. I love nudes, too, and the way that the human body is assembled. I want to sculpt everyone I see. I sometimes see an ear that I would like to copy."

And don't get her started on biceps, bison, the reclining bronze figures that she wants people to touch, and rabbits. Her bronzes of the things are expressive, Renaissance-like creations. And I wanted her Frederic Remington-style, head-butting bison.

In fact, I wanted most of this stuff, especially the full-size, layered, hollow-eyed, bronze horse head that looked like it had been unearthed at Troy. But it's expensive.

But even with the high costs, her things were selling well in six galleries until the recession put five of them out of business.

Still, she doesn't let up, teaching classes here in her studio (see www.cinthiajoyce.com) and sculpting, an exacting and expensive process so fraught with disastrous outcomes I can scarcely believe that anyone would even bother.

And it all starts with clay hanging on a wire armature. With clay, as she explains it, having a natural tendency to crack off and otherwise fall from where it is supposed to be.

That clay figure is then transformed into something called a "mother mold" using $100-a-gallon silicon rubber. This is turned into a clay mold complete with gutters, screws, vents and all sorts of addendum and appendages developed over 5,000 years. Then it is filled with 2,500-degree bronze in a foundry staffed by hearty hammer-and-tong-wielding men in asbestos suits.

The bronze is so hot it takes two full days to cool to the point where it can be finished and worked on grinding wheels.

So I'm not surprised when she says that it is difficult to make a profit in a business where a 2-inch item might cost as much as $3,000 to produce, not counting her many hours of work. That's because time, as she experiences it, isn't measured in hours. Rather it passes in entire days or chunks of days.

Still, a large piece can fetch $30,000. But the prices are so removed from her thinking she has to look them up in her catalog.

There are other problems, too.

"Bronze is forever," she said, showing me one of the tall, abstract pieces that dominate her living room. "Knowing that these things will last puts tremendous pressure on me to do a good job."

Joyce's daughter, something of an artist herself and now an instructor at the London School of Economics, maybe summed her mother up best when she said, "The difference between you and me, mom, is I don't have to make art. You do."

She does indeed.