Spring

I'm a bit of a troglodyte when it comes to Winter and am only just now beginning to come to life again. Creativity slumped badly in the last few months, but I have recently 'discovered' Park Wood - part of the Hergest Croft estate. Owned by the Banks family (yes, the horticultural 'Banksia' family) it's full of exotic species. At the moment the rhododendron trees are just coming into bloom and it's lovely to see them in such a natural environment. It's a place to wander... sit under a tree... be at one with nature...

Creativity has been taking the form of hand-sewing: I'm on my fifth hand-sewn shirt! It's for myself of course - I doubt I'd find any customers willing to pay what it'd cost, as it's a slow, meditative process. The end garment tho gives me infinitely more pleasure than anything I run up on the sewing machine. I must take some photos and put them on here...

A brief word on bronze-casting...

The process starts with making the sculpture in wax first. It then has a wax funnel and various vents attached to it, quickly followed by several layers of ceramic investment. After building up the layers over a week or so, the wax is burned out, and the molten bronze is then poured in.

The final part of the bronze-casting process is to remove the ceramic investment, clean up the lump of dirty-brown metal you now have, then patinate it - generally using chemicals - and finally polish it.

Me being me, I'm actually not terribly keen on the highly finished look that most modern bronzes end up with, so I've been working on achieving a slightly more 'archeological' finish... as here with my 'Alien Vertebra'

Time passes...

I shall hove to work harder at keeping this blog up-to-date... However, I have been studying very hard just recently for an exam and things artistic have had to take slightly second place.

'An exam?' I hear you say... Well, in these financially troubled times, most artists and craftsmen need alternative sources of income. I have decided to train as a Domestic Energy Assessor... Watch this space!

Flower holder Studio window

Bronze 'handbone' Bronze 'splat'

The splat will receive a suitable name in due course, but is still a work in progress...

Basically, molten bronze was poured onto a piece of oak with very dramatic results!

Life after h-Art (Herefordshire Art Week)

H-Art is a major art event in this region: loads of artists open their studios to the public, often in quite out-of-the-way places. The week itself passed smoothly, with 90 visitors wending their way to my back door, but one can't DO very much other than stand (or sit) around waiting for the next person to drop by...
Anyway, it's all done and dusted now and I'm very pleased to say I sold some work! But there IS a bit of a vacuum and it's hard to get back into the swing of things.
Not having had a car for the last ten weeks has been somewhat of a problem, but hopefully I'm addressing THAT this week... Perhaps a 21yo sports car was not in the end the best thing to be running around in!