My day starts with a shave, a quiet contemplative moment for a bloke, it’s that moment in the day when you get to look at your fizog up close. The other day whilst doing this, I was a bit alarmed to notice/imagine that my nose seemed to be bigger than normal. Independent of that experience and later in the day my wife Jacky made the same observation, she tells me it’s one of those things, time moves along and so we are carried by it. Why it should suddenly appear so apparent I really don’t know – hope it stops there! Reminds me of the first time I took my wife to visit my Greek relatives, they had arranged a large family gathering, we all sat down but what became quite apparent was the fact that they were staring at Jacky. It turned out they were fascinated by her nose which is a rather sweet retrousse nose (a Pontypool nose perhaps?). Greek noses it must be said are of the strong nature, a characteristic that I share, even more so now, it would seem. I know racial stereotyping can be an unpleasant thing, but it would be a sad old world if we were uniformly the same. I love those old Roman statues where the physical characteristics of the faces are so strongly expressed.
Moving from noses to hands. I want to map part of the old commercial quarter of the city. In the form of a sculpture this will include shops both past and present. Early in the twentieth century there were lots of ‘makers’. Hat makers. Basket makers, watch makers etc, in other words things were being made locally. I want some sort of graphic that represents that idea which I can incorporate into my sculpture. The common element is the idea of being hand crafted, i.e. the use of the hands, I want to try and pose a pair of hands suggestive of that – the craft of the artisan. Old religious art is full of expressive hands, perhaps it seems too melodramatic to modern taste. I think it depends where you come from, Mediterranean people readily express meaning through gesture and hand movement. Actually thinking about it my kids are not adverse to the odd hand gesture.
