Busy year 2013

It been a long time since i updated my blog as I have been so busy this year. Things are slowing down, which is sort of good as it is just getting colder, and for all those people that work outside lets hope its not as harsh and lengthy a winter as last year! I have done lots of house restoration work this year. The most extreme transformation is this house in Easton, Bristol, which is possibly the worst I have seen still standing!
Before..

 And after

 

I also attended the Bristol festival of stone as an exhibitor, carving a very big salmon. I carved a prototype to see if it would work before attempting the larger sculpture out of a block of Portland.

Bath stone mini fish..

The larger fish is still a work in progress, which I am hoping to complete over the winter as the work is tailing off, hopefully next to a heat source of some sort. This is my most recent picture of it.

And below the still, *sigh* unfinished fish in progress stop motion film, this film is about 3 weeks worth of work.

Had a great day last Friday in a carve off competition with two french sculptors, with plenty of music, and cider. The sun came out and the rain mostly stayed away. It was a pre-launch for a huge event next summer - Festival of stone Bristol 2013 which will involve 50 or more sculptors.

The venue was Spike Island, Bristol. Both teams started with a piece of stone 400 x400 x 600 kindly supplied by Phidias Neo-classical Ltd.

I had the privilege of being partnered with Ben Dearnely (above) who produced the carving of the Mark Foster torso now sited in Southgate, Bath.

We shared the block of stone and Ben carved the man, myself the woman, on the theme of  'Amour'.

Time was limited, we had only six hours, and sketched out our design on the way over from Bath, so all in all it was a success.

 Congrats to both teams, many thanks to all the people who gave up their time to make the day a success and for providing some lovely food, and oodles of beer and cider. And thanks to the accordion player who kept us going!

Triple ying-yang tracery window

I have placed my Art Deco dancing lady to one side and decided to start on an easy project for a break. I will return to her later. Sometimes when you have been staring at something for days, a step back is needed before you can carry on.

Below I have started the preparation with an incised circle, and the drawn the details needed to begin, what is essentially a small component part of a tracery window, and a carved item in in its self.

 All the items and sculptures that I am carving at the moment are for  a local exhibition in the city of Bath, the Newbridge Arts Trail, and I only have three weeks left, arrg...running out of time. After the exhibition, all the items will be on sale on both  Ebay and EtsyEtsy


I am going to try adding a video of this work in progress. Not sure how that will go, fairly new to the blogging world.