Look Up...miss nothing.

When young, I was always taught the benefit of looking up when walking through any built up areas.
The bland mundane shopfronts, almost identical in every town or city, often sit beneath some beautiful architecture of assorted eras. It is an almost foolproof way of finding reward from what can often be otherwise stale and dull surroundings.

However, on rare occasions, the reward of beauty can sometimes be replaced with a smile, especially when the surreal, such as this, pop up...

Makes me want to know the story behind it.

Lost in the woods.

Couldn't resist this...

....found whilst exploring a forest in North Wales...and yes, I got lost!

Maybe they'll come back another day to finish it...

More Useful Mushrooms

As promised, here's the next incarnation of the "Useful Mushrooms" range, kindly suggested by a blog follower.
These corkscrews complement the original bottle opener (as featured in September 2012 of this blog). and on the website.

Again, massively over engineered, with lathe turning, machining, bead blasting, plating and electro-polishing all called upon to make the piece

Huge fun though...

Faith

...as with everything in life, one thing leads to another, so having made the Chain Belt, I've now made the next evolution, the “Heart Belt”.

It's been made by wire eroding a solid billet of stainless to the basic shape, and then hand ground before being hand polished to finish.

The symbolism may be significantly less subtle than the Chain Belt, but carrying an emotion as a physical entity has a semblance of reassurance, and somehow brings peace and tranquillity.

Many of us wear a symbol of our faith, a Christian cross, the Islamic Crescent or the Jewish Star are just some examples. These symbols denote many emotions, but one is surely that of hope, that if we abide by certain principles and beliefs, hope prevails and we become better people as a result.

In faith, we are often at the mercy of our chosen God (in whatever guise he or she may be) We act and move in deliberate and semi-conscious ways as we are influenced by that God in which we believe. Love has many definitions, but above all to love is to be vulnerable, and again, we are at its mercy, and again we move in deliberate and semi conscious ways whilst under its influence.

So then, is love not a faith, a belief?

The only difference is that we generally choose our faith...our God......but rarely do we choose our love.

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Fructus Temporum

There are a whole host of sites on the web that provide a forum for art. Inspiration can nowadays be found from the comfort of your own armchair, under the warm glow of a laptop, without venturing outdoors.
Whilst this in some way is quite sad - the significance of the loss of exploration and discovery in the fresh air of the great outdoors is something the youth of our modern society may never quite understand - there is quite a lazy mesmerising addiction to the power and draw of modern technology.

The best, in my humble opinion, is Fructus Temporum, a site which encourages the surreal, witty and wickedly clever art.

There are pieces on the site that deserve simply nothing but respect - being a fan of art that brings a smile, its the simplicity that truly demonstrates the skill of the featured artists.

....enjoy.

Unrequited

Cupids’ arrow is seen as the true symbol of love, but this piece reflects the other kind of love, the cruelest kind, the one that destroys its victims, the one where the love is desolate….solitary….unrequited. 
 

  

The wound created by the arrow is hidden from initial view, as is the pain and loneliness of the victim. However a closer look reveals the destruction caused as the arrow has struck, tearing out the back of the heart, unseen, un-noticed, much as the crippling agony and suffocating darkness becomes apparent when one comprehends the victim of cupids’ malice.
Unrequited love has a victim, where all the days of meaning, such as Christmas and Birthday and Valentines, are the blackest, and where every day is a rejection…love can indeed be cruel.

Lost wax cast in solid stainless, complete with reproduction medieval arrow, this sculpture will shortly be on my website once final photography work is complete.

Get Out and Touch the World

As spring starts to ponderously wander our way, the lighter days and better weather offer more opportunities to get out and see the sculptures all around us.

Museums and galleries provide the venue to study and consume carefully selected collections of pieces, but inevitably there is an air of somber silence enveloped by seriousness and restraint. Galleries have their place (indeed, I have been fortunate enough to have displayed in them) and they do offer an avenue into enjoying art, but for a fuller experience, I would suggest go outdoors.

Sculpture parks and trails are a wonderful opportunity to see diverse ranges of works in often dramatic situations whilst enjoying the best sculptor of them all – nature. There are examples in this blog of single pieces around the country, but possibly the best collection “under one roof” (well, some 500 acres of parkland) is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

What this and other parks offer is unique, the ability to not only study, learn, ponder and form opinion (on your own or with guides in written and oral form if requested), but that rare ability in the art world, and that is to touch. This can make all the difference in understanding a piece, the texture, surface temperature - these tangible sensations add immeasurably to the experience.

I have a habit of trying to find pieces if I know I'm going to a part of the country I've not been to before, simple internet searches continually yield useful results – without this habit, I would have missed the “Singing Tree” in Burnley Lancashire, or the “AnotherPlace” work (Antony Gormley) along with countless other single and multiple installations. Check out the PublicMonuments and Sculpture Association website for a whole host of parks and trails worth a visit throughout the forthcoming summer.

Finally, for those of us who still prefer a good old fashioned book, try the informative “Sculpture Parks and Trails of England” (Alison Stace) 

– an excellent starting point when planning a day out.

......and if it's an excuse you need, collect that bargain you bought on ebay instead of having it delivered, you'll be surprised what lurks out there to amaze you....