Leaf chair

This is Leaf Chair, a chair that I sculpted in clay in 1998 for Creative Castings to make copies of. It include some small faces around the base that were provided from another source.

Sadly these film photo's don't really do the chair justice but they are the only visual record.

It was really fun to do with vines entwining the chair.

I remember it was hellish heavy.

Inner Struggle - celebrating the imaginative power of the dyslexic mind

This is a wonderful piece by Richard Taylor of Weta Workshop up in Wellington.

A dyslexic mind is clearly a good start to have in life.

I wonder who did the bronze casting, it's a very well done.

This sculpture garden can be seen outside the Dyslexic Foundation in Worcester St, opposite the Christchurch Art Centre.

It's great to have good public art available for everyone to enjoy - access to culture being a basic human right.

Hamish's toes

This is "Hamish" a clay sculpture I got to make in 1998 of a liitle boy reading a book. It was commissioned by Creative Castings, a Christchurch firm that needed original sculptures in order to make hundreds of copies to sell. I was more interested in creating original work and so was quite happy for someone else to make the moulds, do the castings and sell the work.

Hamish lived next door, so he was the main model. I had worked with Sebastian's mum at the polytech, so Sebastian got to be the model for Hamish's toes.

The casting process that was used lost a lot of the detail but despite that, the sculpture was very popular and sold well across NZ in garden and decorator shops.

Hamish and Sebastian are now young men and both tower above me and their mums yet it only seems like yesterday that that this sculpture was being made.

It was a handy thing

Back in 1984, I found myself in a room one day that had some clay in it and feeling bored, I thought - why not use the clay to figure out how metal bars deform when blacksmithing. Well that kept me busy for an hour.

So I was still holding this ball of clay in my hand - looked at it and thought - why not copy that - so 8 hours later - here was a clay hand holding a clay ball of clay.

I was gobsmacked because having never done art at school or played with clay before - here was a fairly accurate little sculpture that had a part of me in it. Then someone walking past offered me $200 for it!

It was quite a cathartic experience - my whole world changed at that point. Here I was finally able to express what I thought and felt in something I could make. On that day I decided I wanted to become a sculptor.

The hand was never fired and today sits by the drawing board in the office.

Anthony Jarrett was immortalised

In 1987 I found this fantastic newspaper picture of Anthony Jarrett winning a race. He has this amazing expression on his face. So I made this small 1/4 life scale marquette one afternoon. It was done in clay and was drying out rapidly. Got some photos before it dried out. It's one I would love to have another go at sometime.

Just magic - working on Globe for Magiciens de la Terre

From late 1987, I had the wonderful opportunity to work for Neil Dawson, a Christchurch-based sculptor who exhibits around the world.

I was employed as a sculptor's assistant. I got to be his hands, and it was just fantastic. Every morning when I came in to start work, there would be a pile of A4-sized drawings he had done the night before—any of which could have become a work of art. Occasionally, I was given a drawing and told to go off and make it—or several identical copies. I then realised what Michelangelo meant by being a factory.

Neil was a really nice chap to work for, very talented and he taught me a lot by personal example.

From memory, work started on Globe about mid-1988. It was to be hung above the plaza outside the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris as part of the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre.

First, a small Marquette was made out of beaten metal mesh and presented with location photos.

Bruce Edgar, Neil's technical wiz, found a way to make this impossible object possible through investigations and trials of materials. Richard Reddaway made a 60cm sphere for a working drawing.

I spent two weeks at the University of Canterbury Geography Department watching all of the satellite imagery available. I remember being mesmerised by time-lapse movies lasting months showing swirling patterns of clouds moving across the planet. There were also books with photos taken by astronauts. It was just stunning!

In an interview, I said, "We originally started off projecting photos onto the surface of the sphere and then accurately trying to trace them on. Every little dot and speck, and then going through and editing that. But it was too mechanical, so now it is being done in quite a sort of painterly way - I just try to put in the general sweeps and swirls and then put lots of resolution in. I noticed that all the scientists have got books and books and books on dissecting the weather, but they have no beautiful pictures of what it actually looked like. Its really very interpretive - a funny situation really - sort of like a ghost painter. I'm painting the world as I see it and Neil comes along and edits it. It's his choice."

The model was then photographed and projected onto a series of hexagon plates made of foam fiberglass composite, eventually bolted together to make a 4.5-meter hollow sphere suspended 25 meters above the Pompidou Plaza.

I traced photos and then cut them out with a router. I can still remember the fiberglass dust and the breathing gear.

I think six people were involved in making Globe. It was carefully assembled and hung from the rafters in Neil's studio. Neil spray-painted it—he did an amazing job—just perfect.

Then Neil and Bruce went to Paris to put it up.

The whole thing was a great experience. After the exhibition, it went to a gallery in New Plymouth and outside a gallery in Australia, where it was eventually destroyed in a storm.

Looking back, Neil showed incredible guts tackling this project. Everyone worked very hard, and technology was at its limit. It was an honour to be part of it.

Photos from the build process

• https://over-the-net.weebly.com/febuary-1989.html
• https://over-the-net.weebly.com/march-1989.html