Upon graduating from an honours degree in Woods, Metals and Plastics in 2002, I was awarded the British Crafts Council "Next Move" Award, which involved a placement within a University Metal department. I moved to Liverpool to join the faculty of Design at Liverpool Hope University. Stimulating conversations with lecturers in sculpture, silversmithing, and ceramics departments enriched my practice. I began developing the forms I made at college, experimenting with scale, form and surface, exhibiting the pieces nationally and also in Europe.

As the two year residency ended, I was offered a studio space at Bridewell Studios in Liverpool City Centre; a 19th Century Police Station, used by the local police force until the 1970 when it was purchased by a group of local artists. It has remained a co-operatively run studio group to the present day. In 2006 I was awarded the British Crafts Council Development Award to fund the full equipment of my metalwork and etching studio.

Studying a variety of materials at college, rather than purely metal, has had a profound effect on my work. Slab-building and the use of surface transfer patterns in the ceramics department influenced the approach I took to building 3D forms in metal, and to the techniques I used to adorn the forms surface. A spell in the printmaking department fuelled a love for the process of acid-etching, which allowed me to explore my love of drawing, in the medium of metal. It is the solidity, and permanence of metal that initially attracted me, and its versatility that has continued to fuel my passion for the material.

Imagery from both the built and the natural environment influence the marks, patterns and textures I apply to metal. I am attracted to repetitive motifs; endless identical windows on a skyscraper, a neatly ploughed field, tide marks on a beach. Equally influential are scarred and eroded architectural facades; peeling wallpaper revealing patterns of mould and mildew, the remains of a staircase on a half-demolished building, protruding pipes and electricity wires. The paintings of Antoni Tapies and Ben Nicholson, and the jeweller Manfred Bishcoff have also influenced my work.

My starting point in the translation from imagery to metal is to draw and to make prints. These works on paper, and subsequently the sculptural forms, explore a sense of proportion; of space, pattern and line. Studying buildings from varying viewpoints, I became interested in form, and perception of form on a large scale. In response to these ideas, the sculptural forms twist and distort, deceiving the eye.

In 2004 I began to make wall mounted pieces. In contrast to the controlled nature of creating the Vessels, the wall pieces allowed a more expressive approach. I developed an extended slate of etching metal colouring techniques in order to be more spontaneous in the act of drawing into metal. I am currently developing these wall pieces on a larger scale.


Technical information:

The forms are constructed from sheets of Gilding metal. Gilding metal is an alloy of Copper and Zinc. The Zinc content strengthens the metal, whilst maintaining the colour properties of copper, including its ability to be patinated with chemical and heat treatments.

I score grooves in the sheet metal, then forge the shape using rollers and hand forming. The form is folded together, and Silver-Soldered along the joints. Silver-soldering is a process which involves placing small pieces of silver solder (silver with some copper content to give a lower melting point ) along a joint. The whole piece is then heated until the pieces of silver solder melt and flow in to the joint.

Once fully constructed, the forms are filed, sanded and polished to a high finish.

It is at this stage, that the surface of the form is acid etched. ( A "resist"*** is used to stop the acid etching particular areas of the metal. Imagine painting nail polish on to a coin and immersing it in Vinegar. After a few hours, the penny will emerge clean, the surface eaten away by the vinegar. The area underneath the nail varnish will remain untouched.)

Once etched, the piece is cleaned up and electro-plated with a layer of Sterling Silver.

Once plated, the piece has a chemical patina applied, which turns the whole surface dark-grey/black.

I then use an abrasive paper to sand back through the layers of patination and plating to reveal both silver and gilding metal surfaces. The etched pattern is accentuated by this process.