Sculpture
A showcase of carving skills at York Minster
The York Minster Stone Carving Festival 2018 is next weekend – 18th and 19th August. I’ve been thinking for ages what I might carve during the two days. The theme is ‘All Creatures Great and Small’, and months ago I decided on an insect of some sort, but have changed my mind many times […]
A Mole and a Mole Sculpture
A feverishly digging mole, scraping at the damp silt and shifting stones and pebbles in its path. I watched it for many moments, but it heard me and vanished down a hole in the bank. It moved surprisingly quickly. The little beck that runs down past my workshop has completely dried up. I’ve […]
One day I’ll carve a goose sculpture
Just the other day a customer asked me if I had ever carved a goose sculpture and I had to reply that I hadn’t, though I really have meant to for many years. I’ve said ‘one day I will’ too often. For anyone who knows me I won’t need to explain, but I’m […]
A Sketchbook – unfettering ideas
When I saw the pencil and crayon drawings they gave me goose-bumps – these were preparatory sketches by Eric Gill, Gaudier-Brzeska and Epstein whose work was brought together in the exhibition Wild Things at the Royal Academy some years ago. Being up close to these studies felt intimate, a glimpse into the genius of […]
Tawny Owl Sculpture
The Tawny Owls here are noisy at the moment. Their calls are really quite musical, I’m hearing a number of different ‘hoots’, which is not surprising given it is their breeding season. The familiar hooting of the male has several functions – as a territorial call, a courtship call and also an announcing call […]
Spring Stone Carving Course
Over the weekend Lastingham rang with the sound of stone carvers – all busy on my Spring Stone Carving Course held in village. I know I’m repeating myself by saying how delighted and astonished I am about the ability of first time carvers, but just look at what was achieved in the allocated two […]
York Minster Stone Carving Festival 2018
I heard yesterday from the Stoneyard at York Minster that I have been allocated a place at the York Minster Stone Carving Festival 2018. This will be a new experience for me as I haven’t carved at a Festival before, or for that matter, ever attended one. It is an international Stone Carving Festival, […]
Fog and Fox
Still blanketed in fog here, as earlier in the week – but today feels so different. I’ve shut out the damp, cloudy feeling and I’m getting close and personal with a fox. I’m thinking of Jim Crumley and his book Encounters in the Wild – Fox as he writes so exceptionally about meeting […]
Fog and Fish
A foggy start this morning, making everything seem heavy and cold. I know it will clear soon enough, as there’s a warmer, brighter beaming of the background sun, which will shine and clarify. Sometimes carving feels like this, a shrugging off required of all superfluous stone, which weighs the shape down, a dense enclosure. […]
In the Workshop today – a Stare of Owls
The collective name most often used for owls is a Parliament – but I discovered there are many others, less well known, like Stare, what about Hooting, or Looming. They seem to make more sense to me. A Stooping, or Diss are suitably descriptive as well, or there’s a Wisdom of Owls. Anyway I’m […]