About
Following five years studying philosophy (Balliol, Oxford; St John’s, Cambridge), the intention to work in academic publishing gave way in response to circumstance, to my other passion, sculpture. A five-year apprenticeship followed by six years’ further work in Dick Reid’s Workshop, led to self-employment in 1994.
The aim all along, as far as commissioned work would allow, was to develop the creative possibilities within contemporary applied sculpture, across a range of wrought materials.
When material is wrought, worked and developed – as carving, or modelled for casting – a creative intention is evident in the outcome. There is less room to ‘hide’ than in installation work, fabricated or constructed sculpture. Where the object-quality of work bears the sense of a thing wrought, directly achieved, and material authenticity is a part of that, one encounters sculpture as particular physical things that directly bear a creative intention.
In an early monograph on Moore (1934), Herbert Read stated that ‘sculpture is not a cabinet art, suitable for drawing rooms or boudoirs: it is a monumental art…primarily a public art, or a community art.’ Ten years later he affirmed this view: ‘The sculptor is essentially a public artist. He cannot confine himself to the bibelots which are all that fall within the capacity of the individual patron of our time. The sculptor is driven into the open, into the church and the market place…’
These were views expressed, of course, in their own time and occasion. But I share these thoughts in seeking to pursue creative applied sculpture. ‘Monumentality’ can then follow from function and context, and avoid that sense had of scale for-the-sake-of-it found in some ‘public art’.
Publications
Towards The Verbal-Visual Object (PDF) Looking for progress in inscriptional lettering. Sculpture Journal vol 18.2 [2009]
Transformations Of Matter (PDF) Contemporary carving in stone. Sculpture Journal vol 21.1 [2012]
Links