08 Still Young

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.”