Katusha Bull

The hard slog is mainly done. By the time I drill through, the positioning is set and it is a matter of continuing to hollow the loops out slowly refining the shape. This bit is not nearly as stressful even though there is less and less margin for error if bad faults in the stone turn up in inconvenient places.

I took advantage of the rain today… with no cars in the car park at the studio I could have the door wide open and slash away with the diamond blade, with the rain just sluicing the dust away as I generated it and I generated plenty!

It saved me having to go up a ladder every half hour to empty the filters on the dust extractor so I was able to make some real progress.

You might think I spent day three doing nothing, but I have three sacks of rubble on the floor of the studio to prove otherwise. In fact I used the pneumatic chisel for so many hours that my hands were throbbing and I awarded myself a day off today to go shopping for my brand new great niece, Zara, born in Sydney yesterday.

Although this is a huge block of stone compared to the sculpture, it is such an odd shape that fitting it in will be a challenge. There is sooo much stone to be got rid of that progress feels very slow. At marble/Marble in the summer they talk about the day four blues when nothing seems to be happening, but I usually hit the lowest point at the end of day two.Working from a blob rather than a block makes it uber difficult to fix key points of reference.

The lump of stone shown here is going to be turned into a twin of the sculpture in the left hand thumbnail.

Most alabaster boulders start out pretty much like this, blackish, greyish, brownish with not much clue as to what the final colour might be, but I am confident from the texture of the surface that it is very similar to that of the finished scupture.

I will be showing again at 21/21 at the Royal College of Art in Kensington Gore, next week, with Vernissage.

20/21 opens Thursday 16th February and runs through Sunday 19th.

See you there.

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.

Keeping my website up to date is driving me crazy.

Much more rewarding was compiling a new book of my work on blurb.

Do have a look at it on http://www.blurb.com/books/2592208.

I know I should be able to do this with a link or a widget, but after nearly two hours on my site I GIVE UP!!!//!!

I am totally mystified! Went to update my exhibition list only to find that it has disappeared.

Logic tells me that it could be retrieved by the press of a button or two but which!?

I am showing with Vernissage at the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea until Sunday 23rd Oct.