Quarry Visit

Gallagher’s Hermitage Lane Quarry is a few miles away from my studio in Maidstone, Kent and it was a great pleasure to be given a guided tour around the whole site the other day. The reason for the quarry visit was due to a new commission I am going to be working on soon, which will see me use the Kentish ragstone donated by Gallagher’s quarry for the production of 8 trophies for the Kent Design and Development Awards which recognises excellence in building and architecture across the county of Kent.

The tour was lead by the mason manager, Vince Tourle, a very experienced and knowledgeable mason. The sun was beating down as we descended down into the heart of the operations. It’s only when you are at this level you can really experience the rock strata’s and geological history of the land.

I have never really used the ragstone for anything other than small bases for sculptures and as it is a limestone it takes a wonderful polish. However, because of its thickness of bed it has never appealed to me as a stone for carving. The other possible reason that I may have been put off working the stone is because the term ‘rag’ is used to describe a stone that is very hard to work!! After being shown what Vince is producing and cutting at the moment on the jaw dropping saw in the quarry I was like a kid in a sweet shop. Not only was I thinking how I could use a variety of different sawn blocks of ragstone for the awards but also introducing larger dimension slabs into my studio and gallery sculptures!! I can’t wait to get some of the samples back and seeing how the stone can perform for me.

A Van Voorden Apollo 6 primary saw with a 3m diameter blade is installed at Hermitage Quarry. This enables 'sawn six sided' and ‘dimensional slab’ Kentish Ragstone to be supplied to stone masons. Carrying out the primary sawing in the quarry reduces transport costs, greatly reduces waste management at the stone mason’s works and enables the off-cuts to be put into the aggregate process.

For the love of Rag!

Photograph courtesy of Maxim - http://www.maxim-pr.co.uk

The recognition of design and development excellence across the county is to be set in stone in the form of hand-carved Kentish Ragstone trophies designed and carved by myself. You can read more about the project by following the link below.

http://www.kentdesigndevelopmentawards.co.uk/2014/05/development-excellence-to-be-recognised.html

Take Five!

Rock Drill!

The drill has been repaired and I have invested in a new drill bit, so its back to perforating sections of the stone with lots of holes close to each other in order to get a nice clean slice of the block. So far I have removed around 1 ton of stone by splitting and blocking out the corners and middle sections. Some sections broke away with ease, other areas required a little more force!. This might be down to my very old hand forged ‘Plugs and Feathers’, which I made myself years ago. They have been pretty faithful to me and have successfully split tons of blocks for me, however this hard Irish Limestone has really punished them, leaving them twisted, bent and a lot shorter! The next stage now is to place the wooden template on top of the slab and to mark out the profile lines again before grinding and cutting away what remains of the drill marks.

Back to the Drawing Board!

As the morning has started with grey wet skies, I thought now would be the ideal time to continue with working on drawings for a private commission. I have been attempting to work with the Möbius strip form and I am exploring how the sculpture could be tightened and widened to suggest 'pauses' and 'rushes' in the overall movement and shape of the stone. After 16 variations on paper I may have to move into using clay to create a few small models to understand the twist in the loop and where tension points will occur. It's actually quite a contrast to sit quietly, listening to the radio and just draw than to be surrounded by dust and noise from stone cutting.

FE ALUMNI SHOW

The UCA at Maidstone is finally coming to a close. To coincide with the students FE show, Artist and Senior Lecturer Mark Selby has curated an exhibition with invited submissions from past and present staff and students. The exhibition will take place in the George Rodger Gallery, UCA Maidstone, from the 28th April - 23 May. For my contribution I will be showing a small stone wall relief sculpture, however there will be a combination of some amazing displays of painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture and illustration. Come along and support the students as well as taking in the sights, sounds and smells of UCA for one final time!