One of Adam’s pots has been donated to the National Museum in Cardiff.
Adam was presented with the Ceramic Review Award at the 2013 Ceramic Art London show. The Award recognises ‘the exceptional, the innovative, the challenging.’ Adam is one of five makers selected from over two hundred applicants for the Jerwood Makers Open 2013, a unique commissioning opportunity which recognises rising stars. He has made a series of porcelain Veneration Bells and hung them in sea caves around the coast of Pembrokeshire.
Alex exhibits widely and his work has featured in award winning show gardens at Chelsea Flower Show and the Westonbirt Festival of Gardens. Public commissions include entrance gates for Memorial Park, West Ham, London, and railings and gates for community redevelopment schemes and schools.
In 2011 Alex was commissioned to make entrance gates for Cemaes Park in Cardiff, free-standing galvanised steel screens for a community garden in a new development in the Cathedral Close, Wells, and a new entrance in corten and stainless steel for an office and residential development in Camden, London.
‘I remember reading a story as a kid in Japan… it was from the folktales of Oita, the region in which I was brought up and the story was about a guy, a priest, who decided to carve a passage through a mountain because travellers kept falling to their deaths from the treacherous path which ran along the cliff edge. I think it took him over twenty years. I remember being hugely impressed with the idea that one person could even think to carve through a mountain. I later visited the passageway where the marks of his chisels could still be seen…
Stone carving requires a huge amount of persistence and determination but once you get to grips with the material, it can be surprisingly flexible and the work itself is strangely meditative. The process of carving stone is like a kind of active dreaming. The material has a density, an unforgiving nature and sense of permanence, but the work I do is more about trying to convey an idea of transformation, of fragility and lightness.’
Charlie exhibits internationally and has pieces in both private and public collections. As well as winning awards for his work, he has completed commissions for a number of major UK organisations.
It was a great privilege to show for the first time in 2006 a sculpture which has particular personal significance for Charlotte. The Thornflower has its roots deep in her childhood and the death of her grandmother in Treblinka in 1942, but it has grown to reflect on not only the Nazi Holocaust but, as Charlotte says, ‘man’s inhumanity to man at other times.’ The sculpture which has evolved represents what Charlotte describes as ‘an urgent wish to make a sculpture uniting opposing elements of thorns and flowers, and which would speak of reconciliation, peace and oneness.’ A pamphlet telling the full story of The Thornflower with details about commissioning arrangements is available on request.
Charlotte’s family came from Prague, which she left as a child to go to England in 1939. At the age of 16 she went to Goldsmiths’ College where she grasped the importance of form and structure from two particularly influential teachers, Ivor Roberts Jones and Harold Wilson Parker. She went on to the Royal College of Art where Frank Dobson urged her to ‘keep it simple.’ Her early sculpture was figurative and carved from stone. A visit to New York in 1967 led to the creation of several sculptures in welded steel, inspired by the scale and architecture of the buildings. In the 1970s a new interest in the natural world developed during family holidays on Dartmoor. First, a series of welded animals, then beautiful poised serene forms inspired by pods, leaves, shells and ammonites, with movement a significant characteristic of her work. Most of her work is cast in bronze by the Pangolin Editions Art Foundry in Gloucestershire, with which she has enjoyed a long association. Some of her work is fabricated in steel. In gardens, Charlotte’s sculptures are in perfect harmony with trees, plants, water and the play of light.
Charlotte Mayer's work is represented in both corporate and institutional collections, and private collections in Europe, Japan and the USA. Public commissions include work for Banque Paribas in London, and in 2001 her large bronze sculpture, Pharus, was installed at Goodwood in Sussex by the Cass Sculpture Foundation.
‘I believe that a sculpture should speak for itself. It should need no verbal description. A title may give a hint to the viewer of what was in the sculptor's mind.’
Now living in Cumbria Danny continues to create work primarily in stone for exhibition and to commission, completing various projects including work for the Open University and Tyne Tees Television.
"There is always an adventure in each work which engages you in solving a problem originating exclusively from the execution of that specific work and which you must solve at that moment. Therefore, the moment is unique and cannot be repeated because as other works evolve they will always be in a new situation. These are the moments in which the work of art is decided upon, even if you have been thinking about it for many months...Neither the expertise nor the experience count. It is the moment of its birth and we cannot and do not know how to explain it. When the work is completed it moves beyond us and it no longer belongs to us".
[From 'A Homage to Sculpture' by Alberto Viani, in 'Gianni Villoresi: Sculpture', produced by Galleria Immaginaria Arti Visive, Florence]
He has given lectures in schools, universities and colleges and has exhibited his work worldwide.
"It's the spiritual energy of a piece of art which counts, and nothing else."
Lotte learnt her craft in her native Denmark through a series of apprenticeships with respected potters such as Gutte Eriksen and Knut Jensen. In her studio she creates sculptures, fountains, bird baths and domestic wares. Her sculptural ‘Books of the Land’, like “fossilised tomes from a distant past”, hide within their vitrified pages rocks, pebbles and bones, and evoke light on lochans and rocky moorland. Lotte’s work is represented in private collections worldwide, and in museums in Scotland and Denmark.
“The clay I use is essentially rock, granite, worn by time and weather, carried by rain and stream … to become sedimentary clay, reformed and burnt once again … so returning it in its new form to its old primeval earth mother does not seem too strange.”
Nadine's bronze portrait head, Nick: The Gamekeeper, has been shortlisted for The Society of Portrait Sculptors' Face 2016 summer exhibition.
Watch a short video of Neil making Hanging Spirals – available from the gallery this summer.
Throughout the 1990s Richard worked in glass studios in the USA, Denmark and the UK and held the position of technician at Surrey Institute of Art and Design. He has taught at Surrey Institute of Art and Design and at North Oxfordshire College. In 2008 he mentored for the Crafts Council.
In 2007 Richard won The Glass Sellers’ Award from The Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers. He has also received awards from the Arts Council, the Crafts Council and the Department of Trade and Industry.
Richard works to commission creating pieces for public, corporate and private environments and his work is exhibited internationally in museums and galleries. His sculptures begin as ideas, with titles anchoring them in his imagination. The form develops to give voice to the idea. Curving planes and shifting volumes, delicate points and perfect curving edges result in beautiful, intriguing complex forms. A confident language of high polished surfaces, deep linear hand carving and surface mark-making add the final layer of information, completing the statement and resolving the idea as a finished piece.
A traditionally trained stonemason with over 20 years’ experience each commission is created in close collaboration with the client and designed sensitively to reflect those commemorated, whilst remaining appropriate to the intended location. She will advise on all elements of the individual design, offering guidance in choosing the type of stone, texture, colour and design of lettering whilst keeping in mind the final setting for each memorial.
“It is my pleasure to help people realize their vision by offering a bespoke artistic service not normally available from most monumental masons”.
Letter carving in stone is a precise discipline which requires patience and attention to detail. Each inscription is drawn out in pencil and carefully hand-carved by mallet and chisel. No computers or machinery are used to design or create the inscriptions.
Roger Stephens’ sculpture is primarily abstract but he also undertakes commissions which are representational. He finds the inflexibility of stone a challenge which extends rather than inhibits his creativity. Occasionally he incorporates iron and stainless steel in his work.
“My current theme is regeneration, new life and the explosion of the energy of a new era. There is also that period just before the unfolding when it is hard to determine what the eventual shape of the new life will be. Not only is there a feeling of optimism and excitement, but also an uncertainty about the future. The forms represent future life, optimism and excitement by suggesting unseen shapes yet to emerge.”
"Many of my earliest memories are of being amongst mountains and rocks, of collecting stones in my pockets. I have always been drawn to the beauty and presence of this ancient material that has helped to shape our landscape. Much of the limestone that I carve was laid down in the Jurassic age, at least 140 million years ago. I cut stone mostly by hand with hammers, chisels, rasps and abrasives, exploring ways to honour its innate sense of gravity and stillness while still expressing energy and movement within the carved form. It is often only when a piece is nearly finished that its sensuality is revealed: the stone unveils its secrets with shell forms, veins of colour fossilised within the substance of time".
Sally received awards for her work from the Arts Council in 2000, 2001 and 2003, The Crafts Council in 2000 and 2004 and the Department of Trade and Industry in 2005. Her work is exhibited internationally in museums and galleries and she also works to commission for public, corporate and private environments. Sally is a visiting lecturer at the Royal Danish School of Design in Denmark. She has also taught on both the BA and MA Contemporary Craft courses at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College (1999-2004) and Escuela del Vidrio, La Granja de San Ildefonso, Spain (2006).
Sally Fawkes’ intriguing artworks articulate the visible and invisible possibilities of place. Bold rhythmical forms entice with the reassurance of their geometric origins and are animated by carefully considered combinations of mark-making, mirrored planes and surfaces of rich associative colours. Their luminous volumes of transparent cast glass are alive with layers of shifting imagery that blur the boundaries between the ethereal and the physical. Each piece captures the imagination in a journey of intense visual exploration.
Sally has been awarded the European Prize for Applied Arts organised by The World Crafts Council, Belgium, in partnership with The WCC-Europe and the City of Mons in Belgium. Most recently she won a prize for a large scale collaborative work with Richard Jackson from The Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, London (2012).
Her work is represented in private, corporate and public collections worldwide, including Mastercard USA and London, MUDAC, Lausanne, Switzerland, M.A.V.A., Madrid, Spain, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
“At the centre of my sculpture there is always the body. This is where I begin, but then I consciously move away from the physical, to explore the lines, volumes and contours as pure, essential forms - seeking to discover the balance that gives harmonic movement to the sculpture. Then finally I return to the idea of the body, reuniting disparate forms into a simple, harmonious unity. This transformation lies at the heart of my working process. Its form is the body, but its aim is the spirit. My sculpture is a meditation on how to express these concepts using a language other than words. However, it is always the body and the simplification of its forms that attracts my interest.”
[Taken from the catalogue of the exhibition, The Visionary Landscape of Professor Sir Robert Burgess, held in the Harold Martin Botanic Garden, University of Leicester, in 2014, and curated by Helaine Blumenfeld OBE and John Sydney Carter FRBS.]
Sioban has won a commission to make a sculpture for a new Marie Curie Hospice in Springburn, Glasgow. Reflecting the nature of palliative care, Sioban made a flurry of white birds from hand prints cast from hospice users and staff and made into bronze, "interconnected by a touch of wing here and a glance of beak there".
For The Garden Gallery's 2014 exhibition, Echoes in the Memory, Sioban made a sculpture called Blown Away (image right). Sioban says of the sculpture, "Blown Away is a study of a moment. The young man, his life fleeting as a gust of leaves, sees the whole world in a glance. '... Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future...'. Inspired by T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, this piece pays homage to so many brave people whose lives are altered by their time. The plinth fabricated in mild steel is reminiscent of hastily dispatched munitions ... or a ship's funnel ... left to rust. Its stripes of bronze reflect adopted strength."
Thanks to the generosity of regular gallery clients and friends, Peter and Carole Wilcock from Winchester, Blown Away is now in the Boyes Garden at the new Remembrance Centre in the National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire. The donation was enabled by Major-General Patrick Cordingley who chaired the appeal for the new Centre.
A love of plants and gardening is a major influence on Tracey’s work. She is fascinated by the play of light across the surface of glass and the way the character of her work changes with the weather. She welcomes the opportunities offered by variety of scale, from the minute modelling of a perfume bottle to the physical demands and the challenge of design presented by a pair of church doors. She also enjoys indulging her own slightly idiosyncratic sense of humour!
Tracey has engraved doors, windows and panels for churches and cathedrals. Other commissions include work for the Colleges of Ampleforth, Eton and Winchester, the BBC, Chelsea Physic Garden, Hampshire County Council and the Dean and Chapter of Winchester. Her work has been presented to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the Duchess of Gloucester and the Sultan of Oman. Recently the Historic Royal Palaces commissioned a piece to present to Her Majesty the Queen at a ceremony to mark the Tower Hill Improvement Scheme. Tracey is a past chairman of The Guild of Glass Engravers and was elected Honorary Vice President of the Guild in 2005.
In 2011 Tracey designed and engraved the glass screen for the front of the Chiddingfold Parish Room, which won the RIBA Downland Award. Jim Garland was the architect.
The image to the right shows details from five panels Tracey engraved for Jack's Place at Naomi House, the children's hospice near Winchester. Tracey called the engraving 'The River of Life'. A book of black and white photographs, 'The Garden Gallery', taken by John Garfield of sculptures and other artworks at the gallery, initiated fund-raising for the commission.
Will also carves house signs, commemorative plaques and memorials. As well as working to commission and making work for exhibitions, Will teaches stone carving, sometimes in schools, pupil referral units and prisons. He also teaches letter cutting and is a Friend of The Edward Johnston Foundation, dedicated to maintaining the art of calligraphy and lettering.
In 2011 Will made a new sculpture for Wirral University Hospital and sold another to Aintree Hospital.