Looking westwards along the deep river valley, the steep hillsides are banked by forest and scree slopes. The contours at which the slate is quarried are self-evident. The landscape moves in its own erosion, there is a sense of the ever changing geology, whilst the human interference is in turn slowly being reclaimed by nature.
Riven Welsh Slate
Dimensions 680 x 450 x 26mm
Contained within their own shape, I envisaged a set of these angular cuts seek to rise, perhaps due to effervescence or due to heat, whilst the riven slate offers this movement a sense of fluidity.
Riven Welsh Slate
Dimensions 680 x 450 x 26mm
The composition of the way light falls in a simple form. These three pleats derive from thinking of a passing moment or a perhaps a movement, such as our hand sweeping across a surface in the three frames of slow motion. In carving this piece by hand, the very action seems to reflect such hand to eye coordinations being transferred into a material as substantial as stone.
Riven Welsh Slate
Dimensions 680 x 450 x 26mm
A small carved book of the individual and shared moments that ebb and flow through our lives each day. The gold here is celebrating such times, their wealth are of memories, our activities in the present and how they become our hopes for tomorrow. In the concentration of drawing, making a mark or the cut of the chisel, I find these moments are lucid and almost setting one free from everyday rigours.
Portuguese Limestone
Dimensions 60 x 60mm x 2
A collaboration for a short story written by Mike Dempsey
After musing about Fraction, and how it is in some way part of the whole. Our initial collection of bullet points covered most notably; the seasons, primary colours, and divided self which progressed to wavelengths,
and tempo.
The struggle of encapsulating a topic in just a few words is awkward, brevity can sometimes seem contrite or edictal when carved in stone. Mike handed me the page, at first various lines or phrases stood out, selecting just part of the story would not do it justice. There are visual references throughout and the idea of modern calligraphic pictograms enticed me.
Welsh Slate
Dimensions 535 x 435 x 25mm
I came across a wooden box of musical notes printed on small cards. The “Seppings Music Method” was a teaching aide used to explain music theory. I loved the idea that one could handle music, and for the notes to become tactile three dimensional objects.
It became apparent these notes should be arranged for a future composition and had a greater sense of energy than the singular nature of an existing tune. Artist and foundryman Drew Cole, helped me through the casting process.
Musical notation sculpted in bronze
Portland Stone base 520 x 360 x 100mm
With Sally Bower
The Language Pillar at the Tibetan Peace Garden in the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, London. The inscriptions are penned by His Holiness the Dali Lama especially for this garden, offering the opportunity
to create understanding between different cultures, the pursuit of peace, and harmony amongst us. This message is carved in English, Tibetan Chinese and Hindi. Sally and I asked John Dasgupta to join us to carve
the Hindi.
The garden was conceived and created by the sculptor Hamish Horsley, and sits adjacent to the Imperial War Museum and an alternative to the subject of human suffering.
Commissioned by Tibet Foundation, London.
Portland Stone
Inscription dimensions 3 metres tall
The Winchester Whisperer, was a secret newspaper written by conscientious objectors in Winchester Jail during the First World War. Imprisoned for their absolute belief against participating in war on religious, cultural and intellectual grounds. Some 5,970 were sentenced and endured privations both mental and physical for the principle of peace. Conditions varied in the prisons and work camps, some relatively comfortable, others barely habitable.
The Winchester Whisperer was passed amongst the prisoners by hand and never discovered by prison staff. The size of a small diary, it was reportedly produced on available toilet paper, bound in the canvas of mailbags, the needles used in the labour of sewing these mailbags were often employed as a dip pen.
Mixed media
Dimensions 450 x 450mm
So much of what we say is conveyed in our gestures, intonation and presentation. Through travels in countries where there is no common language, this becomes our mutual way to converse and much of its success is bound on the enjoyment of such. We also may choose to smile or nod randomly to those we have never met as we walk amongst our local high streets. In this composition only of parts of letters convey this hidden language.
Welsh Slate
Slate dimensions 900 x 115 x 12mm
The Wincilate quarry in the valley of Aberllefenni in North Wales have produced over the centuries some of the finest slate in the world, unfortunately the best seams have now run dry. This map is carved from a large walling slate of a derelict miners’ hut high up in the quarry, and is slightly impure with the some pyrities commonly known as ‘Fools Gold’. As makers, we are often in pursuit of the highest quality material and maintain a responsibility in its use to the sustainability of each resource.
Dimensions 1,550 x 260 x 45mm
Throughout the world, sound brings our attention to the moment, and the clarity of a single note of the bell helps clear our minds whilst the resonance carries with it our wishes, prayers and aspirations.
As part of the permanent national Art & Memory Collection at Grimsthorpe Castle, a new oak stock was made by Whitechapel Bell Foundries and the stone stretcher carved from Portland rather than the originally considered Portuguese marble.
Art & Memory Collection
The Lettering Arts Trust
Dimensions 1,520 x 1,170 x 280mm
As a shadow falls and moves across a surface one can observe a passing moment and a force of nature provided by the sun. Sundials are primarily astronomical instruments using the celestial pole to track
our orbit.
Traditionally sundials tell local time taking no account of longitudes, and also often have no correction for the seasonal variations, nor such artificial additions such as “daylight saving”.
So more often than not, the solar time of a dial does not correspond to modern Greenwich Mean Time, or that of a clock, and I enjoy seeing that passing moment.
