Black & White Curves

There always comes a stage when working with stone that you start to become paranoid about breaking edges and corners. I am at that stage now!! The process of carving the Zebra Rock requires a lot of delicate lifting, moving separate blocks, stacking, lining edges up, measuring, drawing on the stone and lifting off again. You can remove most of the waste when the single stone blocks are back on the bench and then adjust the lines when it has been offered back up onto the block below. The process gets repeated until I am happy with the lines and curves. The Portland is very soft to work while the Irish Blue Limestone is extremely hard, so there is a certain treatment each stone requires. When you place one on top of each other and attempt to carve them together you have to alter your carving technique and the weight of your touch. Otherwise, you find yourself carving, applying force and weight to one stone and then you hit the soft stuff and there is a tendency to remove too much stone as you are applying the same pressure! Things are definitely progressing with the sculptures construction and the two opposite stone types are proving to be a very effective visual combination to reference Sir Gerrard’s fascination with the zebra!

Working with the Multiple

There is always that time when working on a sculpture project that suddenly you look around and you can suddenly see things coming together. For a moment you can enjoy all your hard work and then you look the other way and you see more un-carved dimension blocks everywhere and you realise there is still a lot more to do. I have really wanted to wash the 'seed stack' stones to see them at their best, but they wouldn't stay dust free for long! It won't be until they are installed on site that I can truly appreciate the colour, texture and forms within the stone. I decided to order a Portland Limestone plinth base for this work as the bottom sphere was originally going to sit on the ground. This new plinth is 350 mm high and will elevate the bottom stone to enable you to see the shape and curve of the sphere, this will also make the sculpture very stable. It would be great to create more multiples of these 'seed and conker' forms. I can see now how effective they could be, scattered individually around the base of a large tree or upon a leafy woodland floor...For the time being I will have to make do with the concrete floor in the workshop.

Pinch and a Punch!!

Well, Christmas and the New Year was certainly a rough one! When I mean rough, I'm referring to the bad weather we had. At the studio the yard was hit with fierce winds that brought down trees onto the roof of the workshop, damaging the roof and allowing the rain to pour in! The chainsaw has been in full swing and the log pile has steadily got bigger! After all the drama its great to be back carving and what a nice gentle way to start the year than a rhythmical and meditative texturing job! I don’t know how many times I have had to hit the mallet and chisel onto the hard limestone. You loose yourself to the repetitive motion and sound and it allows you to slip into a state of mind that takes away the physical pain. Carving certainly feels like an endurance activity, especially in this weather! The two segments will get turned over tomorrow and hollowed out… that is if no more trees come down over night!