Graeme Mitcheson – Stone Sculptor, ARBS

The stone for the “Crowd Sculpture” for Harbottle Park in Byker arrived yesterday. As you can see from the pictures they are not small lumps. The largest weighing 5.5 tonnes and the smaller one 3.25.  It was a tense and eventful couple of hours trying to get both pieces into an upright position and without a piece of clever thinking from the crane operator we may still have been trying yet! The work is due to be installed in Novemeber so needless to say, I will be spending most of my time over the next

couple of months carving the designs, provided by the nearby residents of Harbottle Park, onto the stones. I will continue to post pictures of the sculpture as it progresses.

This is one of the 2 rocks that will be used to create the sculpture in Harbottle Park. It is a 5.25 tonne lump of Peak Moor (Derbyshire) sandstone. At the moment it is on the quarry floor but soon it will be having a base cut and then it will be delivered to my workshop where I can finally start to carve the dozens and dozens of faces into it. Fair enough, it doesn’t look much at the moment but in a couple of months it will be standing proudly in a park in Newcastle overlooking the Tyne, the Sage and St.James’s Park. Watch this space….

Between a rock and a hard place.

Some friends stroke my mussels

Great to see the mussel sculpture is Conwy is still being appreciated. Some friends of mine sent me this photo last week. Last time I saw it, the sculpture was keeping its polish where people have been touching it but is fading in other places. In that respect, some more tall people like Paul (at the back)  going to see it would be useful. Not quite so helpful, is a dog called “Chopper” who catalogues his visits to recognisable landmarks in his online diary  ”The Chopper Chronicles”. Regrettably he signed the mussel sculpture in the bottom corner in the way only dogs can. Not sure how that affects the weathering process of Kilkenny Limestone but I suggest next time you visit Conwy that you don’t touch t the bottom part of the sculpture!

The crowd sculpture for Byker

This is how the sculpture for Harbottle Park in Byker should look when it is finished. I have selected the stone for the work so know the size and shapes of the blocks that l be heading my way soon. The community have provided me with over 200 drawings that can be used in the sculpture, all that remains is for me to design and carve them into the 8 and a half tonnes of sandstone that is shortly to be arriving at Hall Farm. Hopefully they will be ready to install around November time. Unfortunately, the stones are going to be too big and too heavy to get inside the workshop so will have to be carved outside. In that respect, some good weather over the next couple of months would not go amiss. The stones are in the process of having flat bases sawn at the quarry to aid their standing up but I will post more pictures when they arrive.

I have just returned from Newcastle where I have been running a number of workshops in Harbottle Park in Byker. We ran the workshops in the estates surrounding the park and invited people to come along and have a go. The idea was for them to think about a moment in a football match that they have watched or played in and to draw onto the stone their expression at that moment in time. They then spent time carving the stones which they could take away and keep. I have kept all of their drawings and will use them in a “crowd scene ” sculpture for the park which I will be making in the coming months. The workshops were a huge success with over 120 stones being carved by both children and adults. Of those who took part, the youngest was 2 and the oldest was 87!  Well done to everyone who joined in, there were some great little carvings. I will post pictures of the “Crowd sculpture” on the blog as it develops.

I have just returned from a  weekend down in Windsor with the family, apart from the obligatory outing to Legoland with the kids, we also managed to have a nose around Eton School. The most striking thing for me was the stunning amount of graffiti chiseled into every bench, desk, door and wall you see. Some of this stuff dates back centuries and judging by the size and depth of some of the carving, probably took several hours to do. In the museum was a special bench where naughty boys would sit  to accept their punishment, this was probably the only bit of wood in the whole school without a mark on it ! Occasionally, some of the carving would be of really high quality, obviously, these boys have been on one of my stone carving weekends for a few pointers, there are more details about my courses on my main website at www.chisel-it.co.uk and I will announce some new dates for these soon. Meanwhile over in Legoland there is a sensational collection of things created solely from Lego bricks. These range from cities,buildings and landmarks through to famous people, giant dragons, motorbikes and even a marvellous portrait of the Queen. Who are the people who make these things and how do you get a job like that? They are clearly very talented and judging by some of the humour attached to some of their creation are having lots of fun doing it. My C.V will be heading down to Legoland in due course.

Some examples of work done on a weekend carving course

On monday  I trundled accross to Leicester with a load of stone in the back of the “custard coupe” . It is the 4th time I have run workshops in Rushey Mead School and it has become a slick operation. The school have breeze block workstations set up ready and even a selection of tools (that the head of D and T picked up from a car boot sale!) so that we can get more children carving during the 3 day workshop. 26 children took part this year, working in pairs in short bursts they set about researching, designing and then carving their sculptures. This years group were particularly hard working, many sporting blisters, there was barely a moan until the final afternoon when they were all clearly shattered. Some good stuff was produced, not least by the 2 lads who hacked their way through their block to create a hole in the centre of their “comet” sculpture. Well done to all who took part.

Next week, the “custard coupe tour” continues up to Newcastle where I will be running some workshops around the Harbottle Park area in Byker. These are related to a large sculpture that I will be making there in September. During the workshops, those taking part will be asked to think of a moment during a football match that they have watched or played in. They will then record their expression during this moment, firstly in a sketch but then into a stone which they will carve themselves. Their designs will then be taken away and incorporated into a crowd scene sculpture that will be sited in the park around November time when I have carved it. From the site of the sculpture, Newcastle Uniteds St. James’s Park is clearly visible, hence the football theme. (They are also all football mad round there too!)

Work by the students of Rushey Mead School

It is an exciting project and I am looking forward to seeing the sort of ideas that I can use in the finished piece.

Mick Jagger famously has trouble obtaining life cover

I woke up this morning feeling absolutely rotten with an unhealthy dose of man flu. Working for yourself has many benefits but feeling down right rotten and not getting paid for having a day off is not one of them, so I trundled into the workshop in a less than chirpy mood today  Funnily enough I was speaking to an insurance company just last week about accident and sickness cover, which only pays after you have been off work for a month, so it would need to be more than my man flu or a proper accident to trouble the claims hot-line. On a similar note, for life insurance, sculptors are put in the same risk category as rock stars (does a stone sculptor classify as a rock star?), so in between trashing hotel rooms and wild orgies, I will try and make time to carve more sculptures so that I don’t have to put images of ageing musicians on my blog. I’m hoping my health improves by next week as I will be working with the kids of Rushy Mead School in Leicester for a few days. I will post some pics of their efforts next week.

The funky new sculpture for All Saints Primary School

I finished the sculpture in All Saints Primary School yesterday. After a scorching2 or 3 weeks in the playground chipping away at the boulder, I put the finishing touches to the stone which celebrates the past and present of the school and Coalville. During the project I was aided by all of the kids in the school (about150) most of whom were happy to get stuck in, each child took home some free stone dust every night on their clothes to show their parents. Some of the kids showeda natural ability and picked up the techniques really quickly. Unfortunately, one 5 year old had a total scatter-gun  approach to where he was chiseling and proceeded to whack a big corner off one of the books that I had carved, ah well, you cant make an omelette without breaking eggs as they say. The sculpture will sit proudly for all to see at the front of the school when it is moved there in the next few weeks, just dont look too closely at the pile of books !