Sculpture

My first big ‘sculpture’ was the papier mache head I made at the age of eighteen for the production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream” in which I played Flute/Thisby. The ability to think in three dimensions is inbuilt I think. Life drawings are, after all, attempts at making a faithful interpretation of solidity in space. My training by Cecil (Sweeny) Todd in architectural Drawing (2 point perspective) was richly rewarding. I made a ladder-tree for my prize-winning ballet version of “Peter & The Wolf’; leaves grew from the rungs in Northern Nigeria where representations of living things as images and idols is forbidden by Islam.

Nevertheless, I attempted to create scultures of invisible people by dipping huge hessian sheets into Plaster of Paris knotting them at one end into a loop which fitted over the head of the standing model/volunteer and then smoothing the cloth over the body before leaving it to dry. When the plaster had set, the model simply backed out leaving a shell where he had been. Rising up behind these plaster figures were salvaged metal chair frames which we welded together into a jumbled tower. It was very effective and worth repeating when the opportunity arises.

The point I’m making is that the prohibition of Islam sparked my interest in sculpture. While in Northern Rhodesia I experimented with sculpting the huge termite hills which had been sliced through during road making; simple enough with spoons and spades and permanent as only baked mud can be in that dry climate. While I was in London I went to a sculpture nightclass simply because all the materials were free. The only thing I finished was a seated life-sized figure in plaster over chickenwire. I left it there.

With Nikos Spyros I went looking for soft soapstone near Umtali, when carved and polished it slowly dried to astonishing hardness. It was at this time I worked with Frank McEwan – curator of the Salisbury (now Harare) Museum – on a television programme about sculpture. One of the local sculptors visited the Zion Center, here in Manchester recently and we recalled those exciting times. Nykos later because a wonderful jewel-maker and made small intricate bronze sculptures which I saw in Brussels in 1976. My only foray into jewel-making is the engagement ring shown here which I designed for my son to give to Sophie. I did fifty drawings, and the piece was realised by a jeweller in Essex.

While in Scotland I was absorbed by photography. But naturally faced for hours at a stretch with perfect, unblemished taut skin I set to wondering if I could make instant photographic sculptural records of my models. You remember that when Rodin showed his Age of Bronze sculpture based on a young soldier he was accused of life-casting – at the time a hideous artcrime but now perfectly acceptable in the lower levels of ‘art’. My efforts were fraught with difficulty. It is all very well dreaming of removing all the hair from a willing model and building a scaffolding around them so that the whole figure, cast in alginate (the expensive stuff dentists use to casts of teeth) could accurately be affected by gravity. Impossible to do lying down. I constantly marvel at the skill of marble carvers. Bernini’s “Apollo & Daphne” at the Belvedere; the wonderful Narcissus on the groundfloor of the Musee D’Orsay. The many versions of “Antinous” in the Vatican. And then of course the utterly gob-smacking virtuousity of the two bearded bronze greek warriors lifted from the seabed near Riace (Magna Graecia)in southern Italy.

I, of course, had very limited funds. I worked in Scotland, in a studio in what had been my bedroom. There was no way I could cut stone, melt metal etc. I therefore used Modroc (plaster impregnated bandage) to make my sculptural photos. My snapshots of Bob’s head were used over and over again (see “Bathboy”, “Surfboard Scultpure” etc) and of the wonderfully patient Boney Tony (“Hotbody”) and John … all the many versions of his bottom which became “Cleft lamp”, “Where the Rainbow Ends” and the large cast I bronzed and which was sold at auction for a giveaway price which didn’t cover the materials or even the expensive mounting of it.

The piece I loved most and which unnerverved some people was my cardboard and brown tape sculpture of “AneMale” which was shown at the Members Exhibition at “Transmission Gallery” in Glasgow in 1998. It was rejected by Bryan as a birthday present and travelled by taxi to the Forbidden Planet Store in Buchanan Street to live there with the rest of the fantasy creatures. He’d have been wonderful in bronze.

I used applied bas-relief sculptural elements in some of my murals(“The Chinese Hallway” has four elemental Dragons and in the three large panels I made for the “Skerry Restaurant”). My largest pieces were made with the woodworker Boney Tony. My maquette for the sheetmetal merman is all that remains of that project intended for the garden the BBC created at Tarbert Harbour.

I have no plans at present to make any more sculptures, though the piece called “Speedo” would make a wonderful basis for a set of sculptural doors.

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