Smiley the celeb

This piece is being used on flyers etc to advertise a garden exhibition including my work, as part of the Brighton Festival in May. He is carved out of a large slab of Western Hemlock, the tree, not the poison they used on poor Socrates. After I had carved him I was stuck for a title, at last settling on "Smiley". Several people commented that he resembled the beautiful carved faces at Angkor Vat. Later that year a friend returned from a holiday in the Far East, and gave me a lovely souvenir book with many pictures. The text was written in pigeon english, and I was very surprised to see that the carved face most resembling my Smiley, is entitled "Smiling of Bayon". I guess a smile is a smile the world over.

The Bone People

This group of small carvings are worked from the dead branches of a Mexican Orange tree. The wood is delightful, soft and pale but very sound. I think of the scrimshaw carvings eskimos and sailors of old would make on bones and tusks. I shall carve more before exhibiting them. I like that, after the initial chiselling in the studio, I can work them with a hand knife on my lap in the evenings, with the telly on. I also am quite excited by the suggestive shapes already there. The standing chap with the outstretched fist I realise now, is exactly like a laying figure in the bottom left corner of Guernica.

My worthy assistant

I thought you may like to see my assistant, who makes useful comments from his window seat in my studio! His name is Rothko, but he is far from depressed.

Joseph and Juliet best pics

next project - small angel

Now I am working on a project for my friend Dave Fry, who supplies my wood. He gave me this Y shaped old  piece of oak, and asked me to find an angel in it.

Joseph and Juliet completed!

Yes, at last completed.....

Joseph and Juliet

 Some photos of a piece I am currently working on. I live in a terraced house with the pavement right outside. One evening I was pulling the curtains, and outside were two young skateboarders, probably aged 13 or so. They were sharing a happy, yet chaste embrace. A few days later I decided to sketch this. During the sketch, the boy developed a big woolly rasta hat, the girl a hijab. I started thinking about Romeo and Juliet, the Montagues and the Capulets, Joseph and Mary, Christians and Muslims.....I hoped the image might convey something universal about warring factions, and love. I decided to call it Joseph and Juliet. It's carved out of a very old oak joist, and looks a bit "lumpy" in progress. The piece is nearly finished now, so I shall post a picture of it completed soon. It would have been finished earlier had it not been for the                                           fantastic heatwave which drew me outside, to the beach, the garden, the hills...