The awesome setting and gorgeous,unseasonably warm late afternoon on the coast of Spain was a most fitting end of an exciting few days of sculpture conference at Bilboa.
We saw wonderful sculptures by Brancusi and Serra at the Guggenheim, and then were treated to a magical afternoon at the Chillida Leku where Eduardo Chillida spent most of his creative life and where there is a spectacular collection of his sculptures. Fabulous few days. Lots of new friends and creative inspiration.

Most of this year has been a succession of sofa days after I shredded the cartilage in my “good” knee heli skiing in Canada in January. It was then a long wait to having both my knees replaced on May 12th. Yes, at once!
Since then my rehabilitation has been punctuated by many a day of finding out how much, “too much” activity is but I am now starting work again if a little tentatively.
Very happily for me, my return to work comes on the heels of a very exciting event. Through my association with the Royal British Society of Sculptors, I was given the opportunity to show five of my sculptures in a solo show, over August at Christie’s South Kensington and I am delighted to be able to report that three of the five sculptures has sold. One of the sculptures was whisked away to Norway and another to San Diego!
I will also be exhibiting with Vernissage at Art London in October so it’s all systems go with lots of fab stone in my studio waiting to be carved…. yippee.

With somewhat patchy cyber connectivity in Marble, and with a treasure trove of stones to choose from, I gave up even trying to blog during the summer and devoted my energies to carving, carving and just a bit more carving instead.I managed to rough out 12 pieces which is something of a record for me and thankfully they have all arrived safe and sound here in London where some have been completed already. (see 2010 gallery page)

It is quite a lot harder that alabaster and grinds better than it chisels as the crystals can tear out rather than cut cleanly. Also the hardness varies hugely within the rock.

My aim is to get as big a triangulate shape hollowed out within the piece as possible. The limitations are on getting the tools in there to do it. This is the easy part done.

So what have I been doing since the beginning of May other than spending a completely disproportionate amount of time on the telephone to customer services at Virgin? This…

.

I was in such a frenzy of stone removal that I gave myself quite a start when suddenly I had this left.

Next, I got to here   and before you knew it to here   then here    

Today I made some final corrections and got a preview about how it might look polished