Before he begins sculpting, Bender gathers as much visual information as he can about the subject.  Most helpful is a succession of photographs that will indicate how the subject has aged.  He can also get the fine details he needs to create a genuine likeness, adding elements such as moles, chest hair, tattoos, freckles, and scars.  He also wants any clothing found with a body, if that's what he's working with, and all the pathology reports. 

Sculptures and photos (the author)

He reads the reports over and over as the image forms. “I want to know everything.  Something may seem insignificant, but in the end, it may play an important part. You just lose yourself in it,” Bender said.

Then he studies the skull.  Sometimes it arrives clean and ready, and sometimes he has to prepare it himself by removing the flesh.  He notes asymmetries and unique features, from the brow to the nasal cavity to the jaw line.  Then he consults the standard skin-thickness charts that other artists and anthropologists have devised for this work.

But the charts are only a beginning.

There's a rhythm throughout nature,” he said, “a harmony, whether it be in dance, painting, sculpture, or music, so I try to work with that.  If you take any good musician's composition and try to change one part, it's going to go sour.  So if you take the facial tissue charts and try to follow them, but then find that one part of the form doesn't feel right, you make it work with the harmony, not the charts.  That's what's most important.  That's my theory.”  

Busts on a wall in the studio (the author)

Generally, the technique involves first making a cast of the skull (or using the skull itself). Small holes are made for wooden or vinyl pegs to be inserted for measuring the facial tissue depth. Then modeling clay fills in the muscles and features around the nose, mouth, cheeks, and eyes, and a thin layer of plastic or clay goes over the skull or mold.  Facial features are molded to capture the person's basic look, and a wig and artificial eyes are added, along with make-up similar to what an embalmer might use for cosmetic enhancement.

A work in progress (the author)

Bender does not wear a watch and works by his own hours, napping along the way.  “I don't think about sculpting.  The image is there.  I'm just following the lines that have been formulating in my head.  It just happens.  I don't stumble over the forms.  It's like music.  It just comes out.”

Once the sculpture is the way he wants it, he makes a mold out of rubber and fiberglass plaster, and then polishes it.  The final step is to take a picture for fliers, newspapers, and television.

Sometimes there's something unusual about a skull, and that helps with identification.  Once he was told that a victim would be a “mouth-breather” based on the shape of her palette, so he planned to shape her face with her mouth slightly open. Then, at the crime scene, which was a trash heap, they found a single lens from a pair of glasses, so he went to look at the frames that would go with the victim's face.  He selected a pair and put them on the sculpture that he'd done from the skull, and the police were then able to identify the victim.  The glasses helped because they weren't ordinary frames.

 “That's where art supplements science,” Bender said.

Since this work is intense, Bender periodically has to purge it from his system.

“Pretty much once a week, I stay up all night and dance.  My assistant will come over and we'll listen to music and unwind.  That helps to clear the palette, to just have fun and let loose.  When I'm done with a case, I clean it out.  I download the case into my fine art, into watercolor or sculpture. Then I'm on to the next one.  If you try to be the ultimate crusader, take it personally, and fight to get every case solved, after a while, you can't see the forest for the trees. You have to keep some balance.  I have to keep my art clear so that it works. I can tell when I have to make adjustments.” 

Bender said that while this work may appear easy, because he can make a sculpture fairly quickly, it is hardly as easy as it looks.

“It's a constant effort.  It may appear easy to people because I can do a sculpture in five or ten days.  But how many months prior to that, waiting for that job, did I think about it?  That's where all the time is.  The thought process takes hours, days.  When I actually render it, I would hope that my hands are good enough now that I know the form and I don’t have to think about how to form a nose.  I make the nose from the image that's in my mind from those three or four months of formulation.  Is it effortless?  No.  It just appears that way, because people don't know the thought process that goes on in a creative person's head."  

Frank poses with some of his work (the author)

Bender emphasizes that his work is not just about what he is thinking; it is the product of a team. “How many people did I contact or go see that helped me know what type of clothing someone wore or what their habits were?  I go to different hairdressers to learn from them so where there's no hair in a case, I can work like a hairdresser and give the person a hairstyle.  I rely on many people.  [One doctor] is an expert on bite marks, so when we have a bite mark on a body, he can do an impression and figure a lot out.  The detectives supply me with information.  I've gone to meet with doctors to learn about scars and surgery.  There have always been and always will be people that are willing to help solve crimes.”