Front cover of From Head to Head book

Summary on the back cover

From Head to Head tells a twenty-year story of bronze casting and of twenty bronze heads forged in heat and fire. It pays tribute to an extraordinary process, capable of replicating the exquisite details of a fine cotton dress, or the veins on a precious oak leaf. It describes a language of love, and the personal, often painful reflections born of an emotional journey through its loss and recovery – all this, transformed into bronze, to be held in place forever. Now, we find further transformation between these pages, as Jennifer retraces her steps through twenty years of creativity and exploration, wending her way across the Butley salt marshes, via Panama, Haiti and Kenya.

Victoria Proctor

All around us fashioned objects reveal confrontations between the will and the material, whether it be heroic or pathetic, awesome or desultory, the evidence is left, and through the timeless study of forms and surfaces, we find both the frailty and the hubris of the human. However, hard the maker tries to conceal themselves under the auspices of craftsmanship or the touch of genius, a subconscious will lurk and bubble to the surface. In Jennifer Hall’s Head series it is obvious, whether conscious or not, that this energy was tapped and luckily for us it flowed.’

Laurence Edwards

Head to Head, a language in bronze by Jennifer Hall

Exhibition and Book Launch, Friday 12^th July to Monday 15^th July 2024.Open every day 11.00-16.00hrs, except 15^th closes at 15.00hrs. The Gallery, Butley Mills Studios, Mill Lane, Butley IP12 3PZ.

Head to Head, a language in bronze by Jennifer Hall

This exhibition was the first time all the Heads, except one, were shown together, and shown in the place they were made – Butley Mills Studios. It was also the launch of the book, which tells the stories behind the Heads.

Silk Shawl 2004
Bronze h31 x w27 x d30 cm

In the summer of 1999, I returned to Suffolk from Hamburg with my three young children.  My marriage had come to an abrupt end, quickly followed by a divorce.  My own and my children’s lives had been turned upside down.

Now we had to find some way of moving on through the hurt and fear of a future that had suddenly become uncertain.

I could see my children were feeling lost.  I felt lost too.  My self-confidence was at zero and I felt very broken.  Rejection is a painful emotion to come to terms with.  I was fortunate in that I had my three young children with me;  who I love to bits; my family who stood beside me and friends who kept in touch.  After five years of expat life, moving from city to city, we were all in need of some stability.  My children started their new lives in local schools (hopefully the last ones for a while) and I could see I needed to go to school too, so I signed up to a Fine Art degree and followed this by learning to cast in bronze at Butley Mills Studios.  At that time, I felt that keeping busy was very necessary.

Moving on to 2004.  What to do with this life-changing experience and its most profound lesson: the realisation it is impossible to completely know someone?  Five years prior, the person I’d thought I knew inside and out, the person I’d married, had become utterly strange to me; someone I barely recognised.

I decided to create a head to further explore and hopefully express this concept.  Not just any old head mind, somehow it had to be disguised, the face and eyes concealed.  This meant it had to be wrapped, hidden.  I chose a very beautiful, colourful silk shawl which I’d bought on my honeymoon in Egypt and wrapped it around a roughly-hewn head-shaped central core.  This wrapped head then went through the various steps to become bronze.

It was a big surprise to see how the casting process had transformed my original idea, imbuing it with all the properties of bronze.  My soft, colourful silk shawl was now hard and cold.  Elements of its beauty remained however.  To my delight, the process had captured the wonderful weft and warp texture, the tassels and the folds.  Yet the dark void where the eyes should have been portrayed something far more sinister.

Kikoy and cotton remnant 2004
Bronze h37 x w29 x d30 cm

I tried the same technique again with my next bronze head.  This time, I wrapped the central core with my father’s Kikoy, a sarong-like piece of fabric worn by Kenyan men around their waists.  My father had worn one instead of a dressing gown.

I twisted a long piece of cotton fabric from my remnants box and wound this around the top of the head to give it the appearance of wearing a turban, tying it off in a large knot on the top.

I wanted this second head to be larger and to show more form, so I made a better job of shaping the central core.  The burn out was successful with the bronze showing all the wonderful flowing folds of the Kikoy, its tassels and the twisted cotton remnant.  What I hadn’t bargained for, was the weight of the sculpture.

Traditionally bonzes are hollow.  It makes sense to be careful with an expensive material which is paid for by weight.  Another consideration is the physical properties of bronze itself, which limit the size of a sculpture.  Head: Kikoy is of course hollow – the shaped central core made sure of that – however, the turban and the knot had not been part of this core and had therefore filled with bronze and become extremely heavy.  (They did look wonderful though!)

I exhibited this head at the Butley Mills Studios Open Weekend in 2007 where it generated a lot of discussion.  The feedback being that it was both mysterious and reminiscent of the Tuareg, a nomadic pastoral tribe in Northern and Western Africa.  This head is actually about my father who I didn’t get to know properly until I was into my early twenties.  He spent most of his life in Africa working for the Colonial Service.  It was therefore important for me to pay tribute to this African legacy in the sculpture.  I remember him as an intensely honourable man, rather stern, and not a little scary to me when I was a little girl.  When I’d grown a bit older, I realised he cared deeply for his family, he just found it difficult to show it.

Sadly today a wrapped face like this would be more likely to bring up terrible memories of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York which changed the world, and the terrifying actions of ISIS fighters during the war in Syria.

Gloves 2004
Bronze h31 x w21 x d28 cm

When my father died in 1988, I asked if I could have his driving gloves as otherwise they would have been given or thrown away.  In the winter, I used to wear them while walking my dog.  They felt familiar, as if we were holding hands.

Through years of use, these gloves had taken on the shape of my father’s hands and now mine joined them.  In 2003, I made a mould of the right-hand glove with my hand in it, so that when I made a wax of it and cast it into bronze it looked as if the glove was being worn (despite in fact being empty).  It was the first bronze I made at Butley Mills Studios.  I love the feeling that this glove gives: something I can touch that reminds me of my father and brings him closer.

My father’s gloves reminded me of the importance of touch, a sense that I’d taken for granted until I experienced its loss later in my life.  I’m talking about the familiar warmth and affectionate touch that comes with a loving relationship, a two-way language of trust and intimacy.  Touch was a sense I hadn’t thought about until after my divorce, when I experienced its terrible absence.

I find gloves interesting, particularly when they take on the shape of the owner’s hands.  When worn, gloves also serve to prevent a person from touching anything directly.  This absence of touch – of touching without touch – was something I wanted to harness for my next head.  Luckily, I managed to find six pairs of gloves of all different styles and textures at the St Elizabeth’s Hospice shop in Woodbridge: leather, nylon and woollen.  I bought them all, much to the bemusement of the shop assistant.

These gloves were fastened to the central core with dressmaking pins, wrapping the head completely, palms inwards towards the face.  I felt that the head needed to be held by the gloves in this way.  The last pair, however, was pinned to the head where the eye sockets would be, palms facing outwards.  This was a way of showing anguish, a child-like memory of crying and rubbing one’s tears away with the back of the hand.

The holes in this sculpture are deliberate and consciously made at the metal working stage.  I wanted the gloves to be as individual as possible, giving the sense of the inside space being tenderly held, like something precious.  This meant that if there was a gap between the gloves which had been filled in with bronze during the pour, well then, this bronze had to be removed.  This is what I did, cut it away.

Like Head: Kikoy and cotton remnant, this sculpture was shown at the 2007 Open weekend at Butley Mills Studios.  One lady found the sculpture very scary, saying that it looked like the head was being smothered.  Another elderly lady completely understood my intended meaning, as her husband had recently passed away and left her trying to come to terms with his loss and being on her own.

Still Young at Heart 2005
Bronze h42 x w35 x d35 cm

‘Growing old is not for the faint hearted.’ *

A sentiment from my dear friend Patricia, a very special lady who made it to ninety-seven years of age and who kept going to the very end, enjoying her life.  Whenever I visited her, she always had me in fits of laughter.  She was a wonderful inspiration and I know she would agree with me in saying that it’s possible, despite the passing of time and a weathered exterior, to remain young at heart.

I didn’t have to go hunting in charity shops or anywhere else for this next head.  I already had a beautiful dress, worn by my daughter Victoria when she was around three years old, stored away.  It was a lovely pale blue, heavy cotton dress with old fashioned smocking across the front.

The central core was covered with Victoria’s dress and sculpted into a face, the material held in place with dressmaking pins.  The smocking became the wrinkled forehead and heavy eyebrows, with the full skirt as the lower face and shoulders.  The casting worked beautifully, with all the detail picked up by the bronze: stitching, smocking, lace collar and its intended big hole.  Unexpected to me however, were two large holes in the shoulders.

After speaking with Laurence about it, I understood that the shoulders had not come out properly because I hadn’t directed the bronze to that part of the mould.  I found it a wonderful mistake, with the bronze taking advantage, ‘doing its own thing’ and creating a truly random and very natural meandering edge to the holes.  It was also an eye-opening moment for my own personal development as I realised that a person could make these mistakes deliberately (if that make sense), to attain a similar effect again – although with molten bronze there is always an element of unpredictability.  Little holes that had appeared in the previous heads were now explained (although they could also have been created because the space for the bronze was too narrow or the bronze was too cold to run through to these areas!  Perhaps it’s impossible to understand the will of the bronze completely.)

* Originally attributed to Mae West who said: “Getting old isn’t for the faint hearted.”

Dressed for the Occasion 2005
Bronze h45 x w50 x d29 cm

I keep reminding myself that being a woman today is a lot better than it used to be.  I am fortunate to have been born into a time, and a society, that allows women to have a voice and live a life of independence.  Over the years, I’ve witnessed a lot of positive change, but also railed at the patriarchal, societal pressures that continue to keep women tied to ‘their place’ – whether that’s as a sex object or in the kitchen.

There’s also that continuous nagging pressure for a woman to always look her best … for whom?  I can still recall my mother’s advice to me when I got married: “Remember to look your best when he comes home after a hard day’s work, put your lipstick on and have a nice glass of wine ready waiting for him while you cook the supper.”

Head: Dressed for the occasion attempts to capture all of this unfairness, the duality of modern womanhood, the demands, the frustrations.  I went hunting again, this time for a beautiful dress with buttons all the way down the front.  Once again, I found success in the local charity shop.  I felt the perfect foil for my sculpture was the Little Black Dress launched into fame by Coco Chanel in the 1920s and which subsequently became The dress to have.  It is also, typically, a very sexy dress.  I wanted to find an item of clothing that would encapsulate all of these things.

Brancusi’s sculpture Princess X (1916, bronze) was also a big influence here.  Its minimalist representation of a woman’s head on a long sinuous neck ending in full rounded breasts caused uproar in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1920.  The furore forced Brancusi to withdraw his piece from the exhibition due to its phallic form, something he strongly denied was intended.

I kept the central core for my sculpture very simple, to mirror this phallic form, and dressed it with my buttoned-up dress.  As we all know, people change the way they behave depending on who they are with and which situation they find themselves in.  In this way, they are ‘dressing for an occasion’.  The sculpture needed the buttons to visualise this idea of unbuttoning the face, which again, hints at changing personalities/dresses, as well as being a continuation of the sexual element.

The fabric burnt out beautifully, with the bronze picking up all the detail from the dress: the fine cotton texture of the fabric, the lines of stitching holding the dress together, the buttons and all the beautiful folds that swirled round to form the shoulders.  So much magic from the medium, such sensitive details captured.  Naturally, I finished her off with a black patina.  A sculpture that was both head and dress, woman and sex object.

Mother, a self-portrait 2008
Bronze h50 x w30 x d21cm

The life of an expat can be exciting, but it can also be very lonely as, with each move, saying goodbye to friends becomes more and more difficult.

The thrill of discovering a new place soon loses its veneer of glamour as the reality sets in: placing your children into yet another new school and trying to reassure their understandable fears of not finding a friend; learning how to drive on the other side of the road; how to find the school, the doctor, the hospital and the supermarket.  It all takes its toll, especially when you don’t yet speak the language.  And then, just as you think you’ve got the hang of it, off you go again to some new place.  The cycle begins anew.

The cardboard box became a symbol of moving for me, unpacking into a new house and starting again.  It underlined that state of instability, impermanence, and of not belonging.  For my children, I became the one thing in their lives that was constant.

1999 heralded divorce and one final move back to England.  This allowed the four of us, and the dog, to finally stay put.  I kept one cardboard removal box from that final move, for storage.  This box became a work of art, with its transformation firstly into a cardboard house, and then subsequently its burning out and resurrection to become a bronze house.

At last, a sense of permanence, a sense of belonging and roots for my children; me, a mother a home a house.

This sculpture doesn’t even try to look like a head, although positioned on its plinth in my garden it does hint at the human form.  It was very much influenced by the wonderful painting, etchings and deceptively simple sculptures of Louise Bourgeois, who often used the fusion between human body and architecture to make her point.  She inspired my own use of the metaphor of head/house/home for this sculpture.  I must admit, I found it very cathartic to burn the legacy of the cardboard box into oblivion, and to welcome it in its new bronze form.

Panama Hats 2010
Bronze h42 x w33 x d33 cm

Head: Panama Hats is the result of my experimentation with the bronze casting process.  I wanted to see if I could turn a pile of hats into bronze, as I loved the image they made when stacked.  It was also my way of supporting the local women in Ecuador, the creators of this amazingly fine hat, and to applaud the Fair Trade movement who are trying to build a better world in which producers like these women can earn a secure and sustainable livelihood.

Curiously, the Panama hat should actually be called the Ecuador hat, as that’s where they’ve always been made.  This misnaming came about when the Panama Canal was being built from 1903 to 1914 by the US Government.  The hat became a favoured garment of the workers, protecting them from the sun.  Hence the name Panama hat was born and has remained.

My five stacked hats presented me with quite a challenge and after talking it through with fellow bronze castors, I cut the top off four of them.  The hat at the top was the only one to remain complete, with the remaining four chopped-down versions piled below.  This created a cavity, where a central core would eventually be placed.  The next step was to make sure that the bronze could run into the overhangs (brims) by placing runners around each rim.  Once burnt out, these runners would form a route for the bronze to take, facilitating its flow to all the areas of the five hats.

After going through the usual burn out process, the hats reappeared in their present bronze form.  They had not cast completely despite the many runners I’d placed.  Maybe the space left by the original hats was too thin, or perhaps it was too far for the bronze to travel before it cooled and stopped.

Whatever the reason, the bronze had done its own thing again, pricking up the fine details of the straw weaving and the texture and detail of the fabric ribbons.  It had also left its natural meandering edge to the hat rims, a fantastic effect.  This is one of my favourite bronze heads.  It looks like the hats have been well and truly worn.

Derek 2010
Bronze h47 x w59 x d40 cm

I’ve always worried about doing commissions.  There’s that constant uncomfortable pressure and doubt that the end product will not be liked.

This bronze was a commission from my good friend Derek Chambers, who asked me to make a head for him.  In response, I said that I’d be happy to do this if he gave me complete freedom to do what I liked.  Luckily he said yes.

To get the ball rolling, I asked him to give me a good photograph of himself, head and shoulders only, three of his old shirts, plus some feathers.  It was important to me that the materials burnt out were his.  I had just completed an MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Sainsbury Centre and learned about practices and beliefs that I thought would be fun to incorporate into Derek’s sculpture.

I started by placing the shirts inside one another, then cut slits into the seams under the arms to allow the sleeves of the inside shirts to be pulled through to the outside.  Each set of sleeves needed to be below the other so that the shirt now looked like it had six arms.  This intriguing new garment dressed the central core which I’d shaped into a head, following the slightly turned position shown in the photograph Derek had sent me.  I modelled and pinned the fabric into place with dressmaking pins, and pulled the sleeves round to the back where they were knotted.

Finally, the feathers were cut into small pieces and pinned onto the shirt.  It never ceases to amaze me how different elements become one when cast into bronze.  The process of burning out the shirts and feathers had fused them together to make a final bonze head.  It was not a true portrait of Derek, but rather a representation that holds his trace from the original materials.  In West African society, the bronze medium, together with layers of clothing, are a sign of high status (as are the feathers in Tahitian society).  It’s these ‘representations’ that can be seen in the Ife and Benin sculptures of this area, rather than the kind of portraits we’re accustomed to in Western art, which have historically prized verisimilitude over all.

The method of bronze casting used by the artists at Butley is similar to the casting process seen in these West African areas.  The end result is one, unique sculpture.  Still, the vagaries of the process are evident in Head: Derek in the random holes which have exposed the inside of the head.  This is where the bronze couldn’t run.  I see these gaps as physical representations of the marks, lines and scars life leaves on a face, exposing the inside to the outside.  A type of vulnerability.

There is also the intended big hole at the top of the head/collar of the shirts, which mirrors the holes found in some of the Benin and Ife heads, where a large intricately carved elephant’s tusk was placed.

The sleeves of the three shirts were drawn tightly back to end in three large knots at the back of the head.  One for Derek’s wife and the other two for his identical twin sons.  These knots symbolise the love and everlasting ties of a family, they are like arms entwined around his neck.

Derek back 2010
Bronze h47 x w59 x d40 cm

I’ve always worried about doing commissions.  There’s that constant uncomfortable pressure and doubt that the end product will not be liked.

This bronze was a commission from my good friend Derek Chambers, who asked me to make a head for him.  In response, I said that I’d be happy to do this if he gave me complete freedom to do what I liked.  Luckily he said yes.

To get the ball rolling, I asked him to give me a good photograph of himself, head and shoulders only, three of his old shirts, plus some feathers.  It was important to me that the materials burnt out were his.  I had just completed an MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Sainsbury Centre and learned about practices and beliefs that I thought would be fun to incorporate into Derek’s sculpture.

I started by placing the shirts inside one another, then cut slits into the seams under the arms to allow the sleeves of the inside shirts to be pulled through to the outside.  Each set of sleeves needed to be below the other so that the shirt now looked like it had six arms.  This intriguing new garment dressed the central core which I’d shaped into a head, following the slightly turned position shown in the photograph Derek had sent me.  I modelled and pinned the fabric into place with dressmaking pins, and pulled the sleeves round to the back where they were knotted.

Finally, the feathers were cut into small pieces and pinned onto the shirt.  It never ceases to amaze me how different elements become one when cast into bronze.  The process of burning out the shirts and feathers had fused them together to make a final bonze head.  It was not a true portrait of Derek, but rather a representation that holds his trace from the original materials.  In West African society, the bronze medium, together with layers of clothing, are a sign of high status (as are the feathers in Tahitian society).  It’s these ‘representations’ that can be seen in the Ife and Benin sculptures of this area, rather than the kind of portraits we’re accustomed to in Western art, which have historically prized verisimilitude over all.

The method of bronze casting used by the artists at Butley is similar to the casting process seen in these West African areas.  The end result is one, unique sculpture.  Still, the vagaries of the process are evident in Head: Derek in the random holes which have exposed the inside of the head.  This is where the bronze couldn’t run.  I see these gaps as physical representations of the marks, lines and scars life leaves on a face, exposing the inside to the outside.  A type of vulnerability.

There is also the intended big hole at the top of the head/collar of the shirts, which mirrors the holes found in some of the Benin and Ife heads, where a large intricately carved elephant’s tusk was placed.

The sleeves of the three shirts were drawn tightly back to end in three large knots at the back of the head.  One for Derek’s wife and the other two for his identical twin sons.  These knots symbolise the love and everlasting ties of a family, they are like arms entwined around his neck.

Wallpaper (Anaglypta Man) 2016
Bronze h39 x w50 x d27 cm

In 2016, the Ipswich Museum collaborated with the Ipswich Art Society members, asking them to respond to their choice of artwork from the collection.  It was a project that would culminate in an exhibition at the Ipswich Art School Gallery.  Head of a Man, a work on paper by Eduardo Paolozzi, was the piece I selected for my response.  Although I was more familiar with Paolozzi’s bronze heads, in particular Shattered Head (1956), which I like very much, I’d not seen anything in two dimensions from him.

My first thought was: could I make a bronze head out of paper?  I’d been thinking about casting paper for quite a while by this point, but had never got around to doing it.  Here was a good reason to have a go.

Wallpaper was a conscious choice.  It’s used to cover over a wall and its imperfections.  From a practical point of view, it is thicker and stronger than everyday paper and therefore better for casting.

Head: Wallpaper (Anaglypta Man) is the result.

The original was made from small, randomly torn pieces of different textured wallpapers collaged onto the central core head.  The thinness of the paper made it necessary for the bronze to be poured very hot.  Even so, there’s one very big hole where the bronze did not flow.  I am not entirely sure whether that was because the space was too thin or because I hadn’t directed the bronze that way with a runner.  Whatever the reason, it changed the sculpture dramatically.  It exposed the inside to the outside, giving access to a blackness that draws the eye, and creates a sense of ancient time.  I was also amazed and impressed at the thinness of the bronze, like a decorative skin or Medieval armour.

Generally, bronze pours at Butley Mills Studios take place on a Friday afternoon.  I would then go in over the weekend to open up my investment mould, with its precious bronze sculpture inside.  On this occasion, however, I wasn’t able to make time to do this until well into the following week.  When I eventually went into the foundry, my mould wasn’t there.  It transpired that one of the young sculptors had very kindly opened it up for me and water-jetted it clean.  He told me the piece was sitting by my metal working table in the metal shed.  I tentatively asked him if my head had worked and the terrible reply was: No it hadn’t, it had a big piece of the face missing.

I braced myself to go and examine the damage only to find the stunning, atmospheric piece as it stands today.  In some ways, the young sculptor had been right, but he was also mistaken; Head: Wallpaper did have a big piece of the face missing, but it certainly had worked.

Seaweed 2005
Bronze h17 x w51 x d40 cm

Some seaweed lives in the roughest part of the ocean, clinging strongly to the rocks by a ‘holdfast’ in the area between the deep ocean and the rocky shore.  Despite being battered by the constant movement of the sea as it crashes onto the beach, seaweed provides, very like the forests of the land, a place of shelter and a source of food for many little creatures.

It is therefore quite devastating when, during a storm, the violence of the sea rips the holdfast from the rocks and flings the seaweed up onto the beach.  The result is the death of the seaweed and many of the creatures carried with it.

The rupture along the fault line between the Burmese and Indian plates on Boxing Day 2004, caused an enormous earthquake which then triggered tsunami waves up to thirty metres high.

It was the deadliest natural disaster in history, killing thousands of people in fourteen countries along the coastline of the Indian Ocean.  The horror of the images and the tragic, and also heroic, stories coming out during and after the event were why I wanted to produce Head: Seaweed.

It very nearly didn’t happen.  Not because I didn’t want to do it but because I encountered  a rather tricky problem.  I’d collected some clumps of seaweed from the beach at Bawdsey on the estuary of the Deben River, after some particularly stormy weather, and brought them back to Butley.  The seaweed was deposited into a large bucket of fresh water to keep it moist.  This was my material to burn out.  Now, all I had to do was make the head with the seaweed, over a central core, and cover it with the investment mould.  I did this twice, but each time the mixture of the investment mould wouldn’t set properly to its usual very hard, protective layer.  There was no way I could put this unfinished mound into the kiln as it would just fall to bits.

I asked Laurence for his help.  He had a think about it and came straight back with a great solution.  The seaweed was stopping the investment mould setting for some reason, and as I am not a scientific person, it wasn’t something I could resolve.  However, from a very practical point of view, it seemed to me that the moisture in the seaweed added to the water content in the investment mould’s mix of plaster and grog.  This made it difficult if not impossible for the mixture to set properly. Laurence’s way round was to quickly take an impression of the seaweed head with the normal investment mix just as it was starting to set, and then remove it.

So for the third time, I dressed a central core with the seaweed, then immediately covered this with a strong mix of the plaster and grog normally used for the investment mould.  As soon as this mixture had set enough to lift, I removed it and turned it over.  There, once the seaweed was gently pulled off, imprinted into the inner curved side, was the negative image of the seaweed head.  I was so thrilled to see it.  How clever, how simple the answer had been.  Now, I could paint this negative impression with liquid hot wax that would thereafter go through the normal bronze casting process.

The result was amazing, with all the seaweed detail there to see, along with some small shells I’d added (and this time the three holes were deliberate.)  A rather beautiful and unexpected spine of bronze (called feathering) had also been created, which followed the high point of the head.  Normally at the metal working stage this would be cut off, but I made the decision to leave it on.

Haiti, a fragment of grief 2010
Bronze h8 x w16 x d13 cm

The fragment of grief appeared sort of by accident when I put an unfinished, terracotta head out into the rain to see what would happen.  I was at home trying to model a head in clay, just to see if I could do it, and was getting frustrated.  So out it went into the garden, where I wouldn’t have to see it.  Predictably, the clay head fell to bits but this one piece, a fragment, survived the experiment and caught my eye.

It was around the time when Haiti was hit by a huge magnitude 7 earthquake in 2010.  I remember feeling very distressed at the intrusive press coverage.  The pain, fear and grief of the Haitian people was hard to view on the television screen.  The devastation was terrible: death, injury, lost families, shattered homes, nowhere safe to shelter.  I couldn’t watch and turned the news off, it had become too much.

Grief is a difficult emotion to witness.  The fallen fragment of modelled clay which had been created in my rainy garden, was taken through the lost wax process.  All I added was a teardrop onto the wax version before it was transformed into bronze.  Maybe if grief can be viewed as a fragment, rather than the whole picture, it can just about be coped with?

As a result of the process 2010
Bronze h10 x w13 x d12 cm

The 2010-2011 winter was the coldest since records began one hundred years earlier.  It brought heavy snowfall and bitterly cold easterly and north-easterly winds.  There was massive disruption countrywide.  As well as the heavy snow, this cold front brought raindrops that froze instantly upon contact with a cold surface.  This latter phenomena was really beautiful to see, coating the branches of the trees around my house and turning them silvery white.  It was also the only time I’ve seen icicles hanging from my guttering.

When these icicles started to melt, there was a steady drip, drip, drip from them.  I decided to put some clay underneath to see what would happen.  I took some terracotta clay and made a simple head, with three holes: two eyes and a mouth (as seen in Anthony Gormley’s wonderful Field series) and then positioned it directly underneath the drips.  There the head stayed until the icicles had melted, which was quite a long time.

Upon casting this weathered head, the bronze had given the sculpture an additional surprise: what is bizarrely called a ‘potato’ in the mouth.  This feature is generally considered a mistake and would normally be removed at the metal working stage.  I left it there as I think it complements the head’s gargoyle aesthetic. As always, I was excited to play with the medium.  In this instance, a great collaboration between the weather and the bronze resulted.

Fig tree 2019
Bronze h44 x w43 x d29 cm

There’s a very large fig tree just by the entrance to Butley Mills Studios.  It has the most beautiful leaves.  They start perfectly formed and small, then they spread out, with their long stalks and curved sections, each clearly marked with a prominent central vein.  From a bronze caster’s perspective, they’re sturdy and therefore ideal to burn out.

These fantastic natural shapes allowed me to play with lines and curves on the surface of the head-shaped central core.  I made a base layering of the leaves onto the face first, then began to think more carefully about where the next should be placed.  The ring of stalks, which form a crown at the top of the head, were a good starting point.  I used smaller leaves for the eyes, turned to show the underside veining – perfect as a line guide.  The following leaf placement then aligned with these first veins to create patterns which meander over the entire face.  I turned the leaves to show the upper surfaces when I felt this worked better, or randomly topped a large leaf with a small one, not always lining them up

The head was finished with a branch holding fruit.  I’ve always thought of figs as very voluptuous with their rounded shape and delicious pink interior, a sign of fertility perhaps.  In Frida Kahlo’s still-life paintings of fruit, she used them as symbols for the cycle of life.  Cut in half, they’re shown as over-ripe or beginning to wither.

Lace 2008
Bronze h40 x w30 x d27 cm        

Easter 2008 saw me visiting Rajasthan in India.  Having travelled from a very quiet Suffolk village, this trip was an incredibly full-on, sensorily stimulating experience.  The relentless heat, dust, sound of honking car and lorry horns, smells of food and spices, alongside the bustling crowds of humanity were all quite overwhelming.

Yet beyond the populated towns and cities were quiet, stunningly beautiful, bleached out landscapes that reminded me of my childhood in Africa.  I found myself awed by the women in their colourful saris and head scarves.  They walked so elegantly through their different terrains with heads held high, often balancing a laden basket of produce.  In some cases, I noticed their cargo was rubble and stones.

I returned home inspired with the desire to try something new.  I wanted to recreate what I’d seen somehow, maybe via modelling in clay, a way of working that was new to me.  These three heads are the result.

Head: Lace pays homage to the beautiful henna decoration I observed on some of the women’s hands.  Henry Moore’s Helmet Head No.1 (1950, cast 1960, bronze) was an influence too, with its themes of protection and wrapping.

Creating Head: Turban marked a big learning curve for me as I needed to model an authentic looking turban in clay.  Fortunately, YouTube was a big help here and I watched some wonderful examples.  In India, I’d seen many different versions of a turban being worn by the men.  I’d been told at the time that it was an important ritual, and sometimes a sacred act, to put it on every morning.  Several attempts were needed to master the clay re-creation! At the time, I felt glad to have tried this traditional way of working: modelling a clay sculpture and then turning it into bronze via the cire perdue casting method.  I realise that my three Indian head sculptures definitely have a different air about them when placed next to my burnt out heads.  It’s this latter technique that is more interesting to me however, and produces work that has gone through a risky and unsettling journey to find itself.  Ultimately, I find this process more exciting.

Turban 2008
Bronze h45 x w36 x d32 cm

Easter 2008 saw me visiting Rajasthan in India.  Having travelled from a very quiet Suffolk village, this trip was an incredibly full-on, sensorily stimulating experience.  The relentless heat, dust, sound of honking car and lorry horns, smells of food and spices, alongside the bustling crowds of humanity were all quite overwhelming.

Yet beyond the populated towns and cities were quiet, stunningly beautiful, bleached out landscapes that reminded me of my childhood in Africa.  I found myself awed by the women in their colourful saris and head scarves.  They walked so elegantly through their different terrains with heads held high, often balancing a laden basket of produce.  In some cases, I noticed their cargo was rubble and stones.

I returned home inspired with the desire to try something new.  I wanted to recreate what I’d seen somehow, maybe via modelling in clay, a way of working that was new to me.  These three heads are the result.

Head: Lace pays homage to the beautiful henna decoration I observed on some of the women’s hands.  Henry Moore’s Helmet Head No.1 (1950, cast 1960, bronze) was an influence too, with its themes of protection and wrapping.

Creating Head: Turban marked a big learning curve for me as I needed to model an authentic looking turban in clay.  Fortunately, YouTube was a big help here and I watched some wonderful examples.  In India, I’d seen many different versions of a turban being worn by the men.  I’d been told at the time that it was an important ritual, and sometimes a sacred act, to put it on every morning.  Several attempts were needed to master the clay re-creation! At the time, I felt glad to have tried this traditional way of working: modelling a clay sculpture and then turning it into bronze via the cire perdue casting method.  I realise that my three Indian head sculptures definitely have a different air about them when placed next to my burnt out heads.  It’s this latter technique that is more interesting to me however, and produces work that has gone through a risky and unsettling journey to find itself.  Ultimately, I find this process more exciting.

Weft and warp 2008
Bronze h38 x w29 x d25 cm

Easter 2008 saw me visiting Rajasthan in India.  Having travelled from a very quiet Suffolk village, this trip was an incredibly full-on, sensorily stimulating experience.  The relentless heat, dust, sound of honking car and lorry horns, smells of food and spices, alongside the bustling crowds of humanity were all quite overwhelming.

Yet beyond the populated towns and cities were quiet, stunningly beautiful, bleached out landscapes that reminded me of my childhood in Africa.  I found myself awed by the women in their colourful saris and head scarves.  They walked so elegantly through their different terrains with heads held high, often balancing a laden basket of produce.  In some cases, I noticed their cargo was rubble and stones.

I returned home inspired with the desire to try something new.  I wanted to recreate what I’d seen somehow, maybe via modelling in clay, a way of working that was new to me.  These three heads are the result.

Head: Lace pays homage to the beautiful henna decoration I observed on some of the women’s hands.  Henry Moore’s Helmet Head No.1 (1950, cast 1960, bronze) was an influence too, with its themes of protection and wrapping.

Creating Head: Turban marked a big learning curve for me as I needed to model an authentic looking turban in clay.  Fortunately, YouTube was a big help here and I watched some wonderful examples.  In India, I’d seen many different versions of a turban being worn by the men.  I’d been told at the time that it was an important ritual, and sometimes a sacred act, to put it on every morning.  Several attempts were needed to master the clay re-creation! At the time, I felt glad to have tried this traditional way of working: modelling a clay sculpture and then turning it into bronze via the cire perdue casting method.  I realise that my three Indian head sculptures definitely have a different air about them when placed next to my burnt out heads.  It’s this latter technique that is more interesting to me however, and produces work that has gone through a risky and unsettling journey to find itself.  Ultimately, I find this process more exciting.

Oak and Hazel Wood (winter waiting for spring) 2018
Bronze h42 x w29 x d31 cm

2017-2018 was when I started a Woodland Residency at White House Farm, Glemham, going regularly to draw in the three woodland areas: the Nutgrove, Back House Pond Covet and Rookyard belt.  In terms of flora and fauna, these three locations are very different.  As soon as you walk into each one, you can instantly recognise its individuality.  The seasons and weather patterns contribute to this changing atmosphere.

The residency began in February 2017, which meant that over the course of that year I saw the woods come alive with a spellbinding intensity.  A transformation from dormant brown, to vibrant greens.  From a relative silence, to a mix of sounds rather like an orchestra tuning up: birds’ song; insects buzzing; wind rustling or howling; rain pitter-pattering on the leaves, hail stones jumping; thunder rumbling and lightning flashing. All the while, different smells came and went.

I made four heads inspired by the trees and seasonal variation from all three woods. Head: Oak and Hazel Wood (winter waiting for spring) was inspired by the Nutgrove.  Here, there are a few large, characterful old oaks as well as many hazel trees, with their beautifully arching branches meeting overhead to give a church-like feel to the space and a green hue to the light.  The hazel has been coppiced in the past, leaving blunt cut ends to the branches.  In the winter, when the leaves have fallen, it’s possible to see right across the wood to the fields beyond.

It was late winter when I collected some twigs from one of the oaks.  I chose those with fat, sticky buds at the end of each twig.  With the hazel, I wanted to hint at the ancient practice of coppicing, and therefore collected twigs with cut ends.  Once transformed into bronze, these cut ends were polished up to a smooth, eye-catching bronze gold.

The twigs were manoeuvred into place around a central core, with extra strategically placed wax tube sections to direct the bronze into every part of the sculpture.  I enjoyed the fact that the oak and hazel twigs also acted as runners, taking the bronze along their own lengths and beyond.  Once cast, the additional bronze connections were then cut off at the metal working stage … unless it looked better to leave them in place, a decision I could take as I worked.

I was absolutely thrilled with the outcome.  The sculpture captured all the magic and atmosphere of the wood and there was clearly a face within the landscape, formed of the intersecting branches.

Oak (summer) 2018
Bronze h47 x w19 x d31 cm

The 2018 Alde Valley Spring Festival exhibition took its theme from the bronze head of Emperor Claudius, found in the River Alde in 1907 at Rendham, two miles upstream from White House Farm.  The piece is regarded as one of England’s earliest examples of portraiture.  The resulting exhibition explored the theme of the Figure in the landscape.

Head: Oak (summer) took this theme to heart, with its depiction of a head/oak tree.  I wanted very much to capture that sense of authority so many bronze Roman heads show especially when adorned with a circular laurel wreath or crown.  I therefore crowned Head: Oak with a simple decoration of oak galls, knopper galls and acorns, while leaving the top of the head open to the elements.  I turned the head slightly, to give a touch of majesty, and also made the neck/trunk strong like the pollarded oaks which populate White House Farm.

There is great affection for the old English oak and its place in English history.  The tree is also of high importance to the insect, bird and animal life residing within the oak’s body, as well as the woodland it rules over.  I wanted to hint at this biodiversity in some way, and found it with my tribute to Snail Hotel.  On one occasion, while drawing in Back House Pond Covet over the winter, I discovered a crevice jam-packed with snails at the base of an oak.  I named it Snail Hotel and made a version of it at the base of Head: Oak (summer).

P.S. I promise I did not burn out live snails!  Empty snail shells were made into wax versions and then put into their new hotel.

Sweet Chestnut (autumn) 2017
Bronze h41 x w22 x d28 cm

Sweet chestnut trees are stunning with their pear-shaped leaves and green prickly fruit.  This spiky casing is the tree’s fierce form of protection for its offspring, the delicious edible nuts within.  As a mother of three precious children, I can relate.

This head is about autumn.  I felt that in order to demonstrate this, I’d take the opportunity to experiment with deliberately making a hole in the bronze.  I did this by putting the runners in the wrong place, or leaving them out entirely.  Despite my efforts to do so, I hadn’t expected to make quite such big hole.  The un-cast space exposes the inside of the head completely, showing the grooves I’d cut with a stone carving tool.  To me, these resemble the long lines of bark on a tree.  It was an unforeseen effect which would normally have remained hidden.  Now the bark is on the inside surface rather than out.

Amazingly, this absence/hole has become an integral part of the structure of the head, highlighting the minimal face, which in turn is essential to the viewer’s recognition and comprehension of the head itself.  It’s become very poignant.  There is a hint of defiance there too, as the head looks upwards towards the sky, braced for winter perhaps.

These fortuitous mistakes and the stunning, random direction of bronze flow remain incredibly exciting.  Of all the bronze heads I’ve made, this one surprised me the most.

This sculpture honours the trees, fallen leaves, and autumn, a spectacular season which we know inevitably heralds the passing of time from summer to winter.  It speaks also to a narrative of women, motherhood, protection and loss.  This woman is in the autumn of her life.

Sweet Chestnut Flowers (summer) 2017
Bronze h28 x w19 x d26 cm

The Sweet Chestnut is monoecious – a word I had to look up in the dictionary.  It means that the tree has separate male flowers and female flowers on the same plant.  To be more precise, along the long yellow catkins of the plant there are mostly male flowers, with the female flowers located at the base of these catkins.  Once fertilised, the prickly casing and fruit develops there, at the base.  The catkins then drop to the ground to form a carpet of spent flowers.  Isn’t nature clever and efficient?

You wouldn’t know it, when you see the sweet chestnut trees in spring looking like they’ve gone quite made with their catkin hairstyles, but they’re actually shouting out: Here I am!  Come and get my nectar.  These trees are an important source of food for animals, including humans.  They are a rich source of vitamin C and B, and contain the minerals magnesium, potassium and iron.

This head was the result of more playing, trying to see if I could cast the flowers in their catkin form, together with the spear-shaped leaves.  I wanted to portray the feeling of a sweet chestnut woodland, as found in Rookyard Belt at White House Farm, with its hinting of mysterious darkness (represented by holes in the bronze) in the foliage and between the trees.  Head: Sweet Chestnut Flowers is one of my smaller heads.  I’m pleased to report that it cast into bronze really well, showing all the veins on the leaves and the lines of catkins crisscrossing the surface to give the impression of a layered canopy.